Act 4 - Scene 8:
Food Supplementation

Supplementation plays an important role in the health of our pets. Food supplementation helps replace the nutrients that have been lost by freezing, poor quality agricultural practices and by lack of freshness.

Supplements also help recreate what pets would get or eat in the wild. For example, when our carnivore friends eat the pancreas of their prey, then our pets would be getting lots of supplemental enzymes. This is because the pancreas is naturally high in enzymes. Therefore, supplemental enzymes, when added to our pet's food will help recreate what our pets would get naturally in the wild.

In the past, bonemeal was added to the diet to help provide a source of calcium. However, bonemeal is no longer used for reasons that have been explained in Part 1 - Scene 6. One can make their own finely ground egg shell supplement as mentioned on the calcium page or one now has the opportunity to buy a supplement that contains ground egg shells.

Many People Ask Me...

Are supplements really necessary?

Of course, when I get a question like this, I know that sometimes the person is slightly lazy and simply looking for an excuse to not give supplements. J

Other times, I know the person is simply a little confused and simply needs some guidance.

I also know that financial considerations are another reason why people ask whether supplements are really necessary.

Truth be known, yes, supplements really are necessary especially a high quality calcium supplement... if you are only going to give your pet 1 supplement, then it should be a calcium supplement such as finely ground egg shells... the extreme importance of calcium to balance the excess phosphorus found in meat cannot be stated enough.

Will your pet survive without supplements... yes, your pet will survive without supplements.

Will your pet be healthier with the use of good quality supplements, especially the calcium supplement? The answer is yes.

A wholesome homemade diet is the foundation to having healthy pets. Supplements help give your pet the extra nutritional strength they need and in some cases, the extra nutrition they require for optimum health.

One thing is for sure, you need to enjoy what you do. If giving supplements is a pain in the butt, then don't give them. All actions must be done with love and if they can't be done with love, then they shouldn't be done at all.

You should not feel forced to give supplements. You should not feel guilty if you do not give supplements. You should enjoy this whole process.

For those that realize the importance of supplementation, then the following guide is meant to help explain my method and approach to giving supplements.

The good news is that giving supplements does not need to be complicated nor expensive especially since if you want, you can make your own ground egg shell powder.

As always, my approach is simple. The best results come with simplicity because simplicity allows consistency... and it's the consistency that brings results.

The best results come with simplicity and consistency.

There are two types of supplements I use:

1. To add extra nutrients and to help recreate the missing elements in the diet.

2. To help the body stay healthy from a healing standpoint.

The following is a list of supplements I use in the order of importance for most situations. This order can however change based on the individual needs of the pet in question.

1. Calcium supplement (finely ground egg shells)

2. Digestive enzymes and probiotics

3. Essential fatty acids

4. Glandulars

5. Whole food supplement and/or herbal blend

6. Aloe vera juice

7. Vitamin C

Additional supplements can be used depending on your budget or needs; however, either way I like to keep things simple and effective. I do not believe you need to use everything on the market.

I'm not into fads either because fads bring inconsistencies... and I would rather be consistent in what I do for optimal results.

Let’s Keep Things Simple But Consistent:

Personally, my preference are supplements that are concentrated whole foods. Whole foods contain all of the main nutrients plus all of the supportive nutrients needed for the full utilization of the supplement. These supportive nutrients are called nutritional cofactors. What this means to you is that if you ate a carrot, not only would the carrot have the beta carotene, but it would have all of the nutrients needed for your body to use the beta carotene.

Nutrients Do Not Work Alone:

Nutrients are part of a team. Your body requires other nutrients to be present in balanced proportions in order to get the job done. If the nutritional co-factors are not provided in the supplement, then the body will actually take the nutritional cofactors from its own body. Therefore, some nutritional supplements can actually deplete the body of nutrients rather than supplying them. You will be hearing more about nutritional co-factors in the future, but this is your introduction.

When you feed a concentrated whole food supplement, then the beauty is that since the nutrition is derived from concentrated whole foods, the supplement has all of the nutritional co-factors!

Many people get confused when talking about supplements. Personally, as mentioned, I love simplicity. So here is my little guide to supplementation to make it easier.

The Supplements I Use:

When I first started my animal nutrition center in 1995, I promoted and used the pet supplements made and formulated by Dr. Swift, DVM. In <% echo gmDate("Y"); %> I still promote, use and recommend the use of Dr. Swift's pet supplements.

Although I no longer operate an animal nutrition center like I used to, I once again make Dr. Swift's nutritional supplements available through pet-grub.com in my pet supplement section.

I first realized how good Dr. Swift's supplements were when a lady's dog kept vomitting its food. I gave the lady some FloraZyme LP, which is a pancreatic derived enzyme supplement for extra digestive assistance, and the lady added this supplement to the meal. The dog did not vomit again.

What I like about Dr. Swift's products are they are of high quality, effective and affordable. Additionally, they are formulated specifically for pets. Dr. Swift was one of the early vets to take a homeopathic and holistic approach to helping pets and so his knowledge and experience are part of the ingredients used in making these pet supplements.

What I also like about Dr. Swift's supplements is that you can do one stop shopping, so to speak. That is, all of the basic supplements are provided from calcium to enzymes, from glandular supplements to a herbal supplement. The supplements provided match my approach and method of supplementing.

So let's take a quick look at what's available to you...

EggShellent Calcium:

I have, since about the year 2000, promoted finely ground egg shells as an excellent source of calcium. In the past, the only way to take advantage of the calcium in finely ground egg shells was to make it yourself. The option to make the finely ground egg shell powder is still available to you. So if you have a good grinder, enough egg shells, the time and inclination to make it yourself, then go right ahead.

The good news is that since egg shells are such a concentrated source of calcium, you really don't need a lot of egg shells to make your own supply. However, if you have larger pets, many pets or don't eat enough eggs, then making your own supply won't be effective. So if making your own finely ground egg shell powder supplement is not possible, then EggShellent Calcium is now available.

Finely ground egg shells make an excellent choice for a calcium supplement as mentioned in Part 1 - Scene 6.

If you are considering giving your pet no supplements at all, then please reconsider. The use of a calcium supplement to help balance the excess phosphorus in meat cannot be stated enough.

If you are only going to give one supplement to your pet, then this is it.

Digestive Enzymes:

Since the digestive system of prey naturally contains tons of enzymes, your pet would get lots of its supplemental enzymes in the wild while eating their prey’s digestive system. So, we use supplemental enzymes to recreate this situation.

My preference, when giving a supplemental digestive enzyme, is to give a pancreatic derived enzyme. The alternative to a pancreatic derived enzyme is a fungal (vegetarian) derived enzyme. Although fungal derived enzymes are also effective, the truth of the matter is that pancreatic (meat) derived enzymes are simply more natural and more effective for our carnivore friends.

FloraZyme LP has always been my favourite digestive enzyme supplement for pets. The pancreatic derived enzymes in this supplement really help make a difference.

FloraZyme EFA is more affordable than FloraZyme LP, but doesn't provide as much digestive assistance as it is a vegetarian source of digestive enzymes.

You do not need to use both of these supplements. You simply use either FloraZyme LP or FloraZyme EFA.

Probiotics are also known as friendly bacteria, such as acidophilus, bifidobacterium, etc. Friendly bacteria is important because this helps digestion and to prevent disease.

Most pets need supplemental friendly bacteria, especially if they have taken antibiotics or eaten commercial pet foods. The preservatives in commercial pet foods are designed to control bacteria and that's essentially what antibiotics to do.

It takes at least 1 year to re-colonize the intestinal tract with friendly bacteria. So this is a supplement that should be given for at least 1 year if not longer.

In the wild, our pets would naturally get friendly bacteria when eating the intestinal tract of its prey.

Both FloraZyme LP and FloraZyme EFA also provide friendly bacteria (acidophilus & bifidobacterium). Therefore, these supplements provide both digestive enzymes for improved digestion of food and friendly bacteria to help keep the intestinal tract full of friendly bacteria.

Two links are available for extra information about enzymes:

• Introduction to enzymes

• The law of adaptive enzyme secretion

 Essential Fatty Acids:

Essential fatty acids are explained in more detail on the next page (Appendix A - Scene 9).

This is one supplement that I do not provide and is best bought from your local health food store. You have the option of buying some oils (flax, salmon, hemp, etc) or feeding some finely ground seeds such as flax, pumpkin and sunflower seeds (read Appendix A - Scene 9 for more information).

Although you can use flax, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, you can also feed ground hemp seeds now which is an excellent source of essential fatty acids.

My preference is to give ground seeds rather than an oil. Why? The ground seeds provide all of the nutritional co-factors, that is, all of the supporting nutrients of the whole seed. An oil simply provides the nutrition of the oil.

Essential fatty acids are essential to good health. This is why they are called "essential" fatty acids.

EFA's (Essential Fatty Acids) are only available through foods. Most foods that we feed are not good sources of EFA’s. Foods in the past were a better source of EFA’s than they are now. This is due to poor agricultural practices that have drained the soils of all their goodness.

For those that like to give their dogs a treat, I sometimes buy an EFA in a soft gel capsule. I then give this soft gel capsule to my dogs and they love it. They get to squish the EFA's out of the soft gel with great pleasure. This makes a healthy treat that my dogs love.

I haven't tried giving soft gel capsules to cats, but I am sure some cats will like this too. Although cats have a harder time chewing their food. Cats generally chew with their molars as a way of ripping the meat off their prey.

Glandulars:

Glandulars are a concentrated supplement that contain raw glands and organs. Glandulars help the body and essentially recreate the glands and organs that your pets would naturally be eating in the wild.

You can either give a glandular supplement or simply provide organ meat as mentioned in Part 2 - Scene 2 to the diet to act as a natural glandular.

For general health and well being, Pet G.O. Powder or Pet G.O. Wafers can be given. These are a glandular supplement that provide an overall balance of various glands and organs.

In cases where the pet is sick then giving a more specific glandular supplement should be considered. More information about glandulars can be found in Appendix A - Scene 15.

The more specific glandular supplements include:

• Immu G.O.:
  • beneficial for the support of the immune system
• Rena G.O.:
  • beneficial for the support of the kidneys
• Thyro G.O.:
  • beneficial for the support the thyroid, adrenals, pituitary and in general, the whole endocrine system

I personally feel that giving that giving the above 3 supplements, in rotation, is a great way of helping our pet's health. Supporting the health of the kidneys, immune system and endocrine system is simply a good idea. In cases of illness, then these become even more important. As Hippocrates said, "let thy food by thy medicine and thy medicine by thy food".

Petigreens:

Although carnivores do not eat a lot of herbs naturally, they do eat some. Plus, a herbal supplement recreates the herbs that would have been found in the prey’s digestive system.

Using some gentle herbs can help improve the overall health and well being of your pets. I choose to use herbs for general health that aid in detoxifying, help purify the blood, assist the liver, kidney, the thyroid and more.

In some situations I use herbal tinctures and in others, I use herbal powders. I would use a herbal tincture if I specifically wanted to help the kidneys, liver, lymphatic system, etc. I use a herbal powder when I simply want to provide more nutrients from herbs while assisting the healing process and/or want to take preventative measures regarding good health.

A whole food supplement will contain both medicinal and nutritive herbs. So for general purposes I like to use a whole food supplement.

Petigreens is simply a green food supplement that helps to provide the healthy nutrients of green foods which our pets would normally get from the digestive tract of their prey.

Aloe Vera Juice:

Providing aloe vera juice as a supplement is a great idea. Not only does it have some nutrition, but it helps the body cleanse of toxins, it helps to soothe and heal the body (inside and out).

Aloe vera is best bought from your local health food store due to its weight. The cost of shipping for a product like aloe vera juice would be too much.

When buying an aloe vera supplement, please remember that many aloe vera juice products contain sodium benzoate, also known as benzoic acid. While this is a natural ingredient uses as a preservative, it is toxic to cats and therefore should be avoided if you have cats. If you have cats, you must read the label!

The amount of aloe vera to give depends on the weight of the pet. Below you will find a chart on how to convert a suggested human dose to a pet dose. This is the approach I take to giving aloe vera juice.

Since aloe vera juice is a good cleanser of toxins, you might want to start off with about half of the amount then slowly, over a week or two increase to the suggested amount. You can then increase slightly or decrease slightly to find the ideal amount. You will know if you are giving too much because your pet will probably have loose stools.

Read my article about aloe vera juice to learn more about the benefits of aloe vera juice.

Vitamin C:

Although in most cases food and a general supplement provide enough vitamin C, there are situations in which additional vitamin C is needed.

In days past, vitamin C would not be needed, but in today’s world some pets require extra vitamin C. Vitamin C is most often used to help prevent hip dysplasia, in cases of illness, disease, stress and more.

The interesting thing about vitamin C and something that most people don't realize is that pets would naturally get a lot of vitamin C in the wild!

Let's consider the following... the Inuit and all the traditional people who live in the northern parts of the world where no vegetation grows survive quite well without vegetables. Now, we need to consider two things here... we humans require and need vitamin C for good health and generally speaking we get vitamin C from fruits and vegetables. So how do the people of the north survive without vitamin C?

The answer is they didn't! They did have vitamin C and in fact, they had an abundance of vitamin C. The people of the north got their vitamin C from eating raw meat! Raw meat is a high source of vitamin C.

It is for this very reason that we cannot ignore vitamin C. This is a crucial vitamin and although raw meats do provide some vitamin C, the fact is, raw meat is no longer totally fresh and so the amount of vitamin C in raw meat will be decreased.

Giving vitamin C is at the bottom of my list above in terms of importance, but that's not because vitamin C isn't important... it is!

My list above has vitamin C as the #7 supplement simply because there is already some vitamin C in raw meat. So if you had to decide between an essential fatty acid supplement and a vitamin C supplement, then I would choose the essential fatty acid supplement.

The fact is that vitamin C is crucial to the absorption of calcium. Therefore, supplemental vitamin C is extremely important in helping our pets absorb the supplemental calcium.

Hip dysplasia has been described as scurvy in pets. This is because the lack of vitamin C has prevented the body from absorbing and utilizing calcium properly and efficiently. In turn, the hips don't form properly and thus you have hip dysplasia.

You should therefore really consider giving vitamin C if you can, especially if you have a large breed dog, a puppy or kitten or a pet that is ill.

When giving vitamin C, then question is... which one do I get?

The fact is, most vitamin C's on the market are synthetic... that is, they are man made... essentially a chemical form of vitamin C.

So I personally would prefer to give my pets a natural form of vitamin C. You can give something like ground rose hips because rose hips are naturally high in vitamin C. You can also find supplements in tablet form that are made using rose hips. Rose hips are a far better and cheaper way of providing vitamin C when compared to the synthetic vitamin C's on the market.

In terms of other products on the market, I like a product by a company called Nutribiotic. The vitamin C supplement made my Nutribiotic is called "Meta C" and this is a whole food derived vitamin C supplement. The Nutribiotic web site doesn't clearly explain the benefits of Meta C but if you go to your local health food store and ask for Meta C then you can always read the label.

Hopefully this information has helped you learn which supplements I use, which ones I like and why.

Not everyone will want to or even need to use all of the supplements, but these supplements each have their own benefits. Hopefully you can now make wiser decisions when purchasing supplements.

Converting a Human Product to a Pet Product:

One of the benefits of using the pet supplements that I promote through pet-grub.com is that you don't need to guess on how much to use. The pet supplements that I provide provide guidelines on the label regarding how much to give as they are specifically formulated for pets.

But if you are using products designed for humans, then you will need to convert the human dose to a pet dose. This needs to be done for both herbal and nutritional supplements designed for humans such as aloe vera juice, etc.

We cannot give human doses of vitamins or herbs to our pets.

Here is my little guide to converting a human product to a pet product:

I base the weight on a human being 100 pounds in weight.

So a pet that is....

• 100 pounds or more gets the full human dose

• 90 to 100 pounds get 90% of the human dose

• 80 to 90 pounds get 80% of the human dose

• 70 to 80 pounds get 70% of the human dose

• 60 to 70 pounds get 60% of the human dose

• 50 to 60 pounds get 50% of the human dose

• 40 to 50 pounds get 40% of the human dose

• 30 to 40 pounds get 30% of the human dose

• 20 to 30 pounds get 20% of the human dose

• 10 to 20 pounds get 10% of the human dose

This guide doesn't apply to homeopathic remedies.

More information about my suggestions regarding how to use supplements and remedies is available.

You can also read where some of the supplements that I like can be found in my product suggestion page.

My guides are general in nature, so contact your holistic vet for more help if you want.

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