I don’t always have the answers, but boy do I love asking questions. And honestly, one of the most fascinating questions we can answer if we hope to understand modern disease is??Why is ?Western Disease? something that only humans and their pets experience??
Below I’ve listed what I think are some of the prime suspects ? representing a vast array of health ideologies. Feel free to add to the list in the comments, let me know your personal experiences with illness in pets, and please share your own personal thoughts, especially if your thoughts differ with mine. Otherwise just sit back and enjoy having your mind blown. The focus will be dogs because they are a little more predictable, easy-to-understand, and emotional ? generally-speaking.
1) Lack of exercise ? If you go out hiking with a dog, the dog will literally spend the whole day running, sniffing, hopping over objects, chasing animals, splashing through water, and sliding around in spring snow. Likewise, if you grab a leash or Frisbee, the dog pretty much always says ?yes? to the idea. In other words, dogs have a lot more energy for exercise than they get in their unnatural environment of laying around in a house or yard all day long with no purpose or stimulation. In laboratory animals, restricting movement can cause obesity and the diseases of affluence that often get pegged to obesity (although, statistically-speaking, the connection is blown way out of proportion). While an hour of exercise per day doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on weight, this is not true when exercising 8-10 hours a day. The weight pours off like it did for Kirstie Alley and her 5-hour per day Dancing With the Stars training regimen. Yeah I said Dancing With the Stars.
2) Pet food contains grains ? Both cat food and dog food contain grains. Is this biologically-inappropriate substance causing Western Disease in pets? We know it does not cause obesity in humans ? grain consumption is strongly associated with leanness not obesity, but the more highly carnivorous cats and dogs may be different.
3) Vegetable oil in pet food ? I haven’t carefully studied the ingredient list of the top selling brands of pet food, but if I know anything about cheap processed industrial food that appears on shelves, it must have cheap vegetable fat in it. Vegetable oil seems fully capable of slowing down metabolic rate, causing excessive oxidative damage in tissues, and increasing inflammation ? these are the three most common causes or combination of causes of cancer, heart disease, obesity, allergies, asthma, arthritis, and other inflammatory Western Diseases. Of course, it’s not just pet food that pets eat – especially the fat and diabetic ones. Mmmm, peanut butter – the food with the highest ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 of any known food…
4) Flavor enhancers in pet food ? Pet food manufacturing is no different than human food manufacturing ? the way to be successful is to produce a pet food that your pet likes better and will eat more of than the competitors. Pet food is designed to have highly-palatable textures, macronutrient balance, and rock-your-fleas-off flavor. Is food overconsumption due to pleasure center stimulation in dog food and treats where Western Disease originates in pets? Pet food is certainly more palatable than say, a freshly-killed mouse covered in hair and full of feces.
5) Psychological Interference with Eating Cues ? Speaking of treats? You wanna treat??!!!! Humans seem to hold food over their pets like a reward, triggering Pavlovian responses to the very word ‘treat. Food is entertainment, whereas for all wild animals eating is plain, boring, repetitive, monotonous, devoid of seasoning, eaten by itself and not buffet-style, raw, and barely palatable enough to choke down ? with a bunch of hair and fiber in it. They also tend to limit food consumption, have set feedings that are often spaced very far apart, and otherwise remove a pet from its natural eating cues ? putting it in starve and binge mode that has close ties to obesity in humans. It’s even fathomable that a human with psychological issues surrounding food could easily transmit these emotions around food to a pet. Author Jon Gabriel mentions being able to fatten his cat only by restricting its food intake ? triggering its body to attempt to store fat when food was provided. Some of the leanest pets I’ve seen that didn’t go nuts over the presence of food were those that always had a full dish of food sitting on the floor somewhere. There are many lessons to be learned in this realm, and it seems to certainly be part of the whole picture somehow.
6) Artificial lighting ? Author T.S. Wiley believes that artificial lighting, because it elevates cortisol in the evening when it should be falling, disturbs circadian rhythms and keeps humans and their pets in a perpetual state of summer physiology. In other words, it triggers us to eat and eat and eat as if storing up for a long winter (in nature, if you have 16 hours of light exposure, it is reasonable to think that this would trigger an instinctual drive to prepare for the coming 8 hours of daily light exposure ? whereas in the tropics you have roughly the same number of hours of daylight exposure every day and no reason to store up for some big winter coming up). While this sounds very far-fetched, and is far-fetched, we do know that sleep disturbances and abnormalities in circadian rhythms can cause metabolic syndrome. We are learning more and more about this every day, and it is certainly a big deal. So it’s not as far-fetched as it sounds and may actually be a contributing factor somehow. But regardless of what you think about it, I just got to use the word ?fetch? three times (oh, there’s the 4th), which, considering the topic, makes me look like the most awesomest and clever writer of all time ever.
7) Emotional connection with humans ? This is by far the wildest idea out there and is the original inspiration for this article. I posed this question about why do pets and humans have diseases that no other creatures seem to have to someone the other day. Then I started peeling off the potential reasons and quickly mentioned that ‘some people even think that emotional ties to the humans are what causes them to have the same diseases as humans. The person lit up like a lightbulb when I said this, saying that her dog didn’t have seizures before they bought it, but after entering the household ? where both father and daughter suffered from seizures, the dog began having seizures too. Pretty wild stuff. So I later called my most new agey friend who is really into a field in which this type of idea is being studied and utilized called Meta Medicine (You can read about it in the book, Why Am I Sick? By Richard Flook). Excited to tell her about this, as it was confirmation of her views on the origins of disease, she told me of an identical story of her significant other, and how his dog developed seizures when someone else in the household did as well. While this is not proof of anything, it is a complete mind-blower that should make us all question our beliefs about things. It could be that some diseases, at least in part (taking susceptibility out of the equation), are contagious not through germs, but through emotions ? especially to our poor pets that do not have reasoning minds to protect against the wild changes in the emotional state that is a side effect of the logical, human mind. Human emotions, because of our brains, are often chronic ? which is totally different from the acute emotional surges experienced by wild animals that are quickly dissipated and forgotten. But pets are fully tuned into the emotional state of the ?pack leader? (pronounced in a Mexican accent ? ?Pock Lead-Air?) at all times. Their senses are so finely attuned to the owner that dogs can detect seizures in humans hours before the’seizure takes place.It would be just as outrageous to suggest that human emotions could NOT trickle down and cause the same diseases that we know emotions cause in humans as it would be to suggest that these emotions CAN cause disease. That sentence was terrible but I’m too lazy to fix it. Sorry.
What is the right answer? There is no right answer. But like anything, it pays to really examine the whole picture. It’s probably a combination of many things. There could be all kinds of other factors too ? such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals in carpeting, household cleaners, paint, and fabrics. It could be pesticides in agricultural products consumed only by humans and their pets. It could be fluoride in water. We just don’t know. But the whole experience of sitting around unstimulated with physical activity being much less than is natural, eating food that is unnaturally pleasurable, bathing in hormone-impacting artificial light, drowning in a sea of depressive and chronic emotional states, withholding food and then making it overly exciting with bizarre voice inflections, choking down inflammatory and metabolically-suppressive fats, taking in a bunch of foreign chemicals ? this whole picture and the diet/lifestyle/psychology as a whole obviously causes Western Disease. Trying to narrow it down to one thing is probably a bad idea, an improper way to think about the big picture, and impossible.
But it’s a fascinating thing to think about. Bring on the pet stories in the comments!
Kay this is just freaky weird coincidence, but just this morning I was talking to my husband about switching our cats over to raw mince meat away from pet food. Our cats are indoor outdoor girls, they have a big area to roam in and by far the healthier of the two is the one who practically lives outside and gets lots of raw meat in the form of baby bunnies, birds, mice and voles. The other one is starting to get a gut even though she is much smaller than the other one. The healthier of the two is also the one that couldn't give a fuck about us, and will on occasion use us for our body heat at night or allow us to feed her when she's had a bad week hunting. The lap kitty that hovers over my son like a second mama, and is the one we adore is the one who probably will develop human diseases. She is healthier than most because she lives outside more than most and gets the occasional mouse herself.
I also think drinking water is a factor. Our cats will drink the stale scary rainwater out of a rusty wheelbarrow before they'll touch flourinated stuff. I'm always amazed that they don't get sick from it. (We never give them parasite preventive medicine…maybe that's stupid, but I've known barn cats that have lived to be 15 or 20 without it.)
My pets do get fed kibble because cooking for my pets is just not something I can make time for right now. But they are only fed high-protein, grain-free kibble with no artificial colors (WTF?) or additives. I have three cats who all eat this way. Two of them are thin and slinky, and one looks like the cat in your photo! She's looked like that since she was a youngish cat of a year old or so (she's now 13) and the other two cats, aged 10 and 13, have both just always been thin and sleek since kittenhood. Same diet for all of them.
My dog is normal weight, but every dog I've ever owned but one has been normal weight. I only ever once had a dog that got fat – even though I was feeding her half the amount of food that I was feeding her brother, who was only half the weight she was and was skinny. But when I switched her from the low-fat, high carb diet that vet wanted her on to a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb diet she dropped all her excess weight within months and remained trim the rest of her life (14 years).
i have a pet story to share. between 8 and 9 years ago i lived in overland park, kansas, in my grandmother's house that my parents own on the corner of a very busy intersection. at this time in my life my mental state of mind was wacked out and i had just accepted that i was depressed and had major panic and anxiety attacks. i didn't have the kind of info i have today about health, obviously, so i was pretty much a hermit b/c nothing i did to try to cure it ever helped. i had to psyche myself up to go outside to do anything, and oftentimes that wouldn't work. i hated living on that corner b/c of the traffic noise and i rarely spent any time in the backyard that was quite roomy and nice with a 6 foot privacy fence. okay, i don't remember all of the details, but i remember telling my boyfriend (now husband) that i thought the dog was acting weird regarding the backyard b/c she never wanted to go out and if she did go out she came right back in after doing her business in kind of a panic-"let me in quick!" kind of way. and i wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that i hated the backyard. she liked to stay inside near me all the time and seemed content to just sleep or lay around chewing on a pig ear.
regarding a dog's diet, a former chiropractor who used to treat me was also a specialist in animal chiropractic and she would go to grocery stores and get the leftover chicken parts and feed her dogs a completely raw diet. my mom used to buy raw dog food that was frozen and cost a crazy amount of money, but when her dogs were on that food they were very healthy. i wanted to get my dog on it, but i had a lab mix and it literally would have been hundreds of dollars a month to feed her. i believe the dog food industry is ridiculous. but the dog food industry is the same as the people food industry: let's see how much profit we can make off of selling the absolute cheapest ingredients to an unsuspecting population most of whom will fall for our propaganda and false marketing.
1. lack of exercise: When I was working at Walt Disney World, it was hot and I ate whatever I wanted, I put in on average, 25 miles/day cleaning restrooms, flinging 60 lb. bags of trash (58 cans per hour) or sweeping, pan and broom. I ate garbage food a lot, including frozen meals, ice cream bars with splenda (every day) and at least one Sprite/day. I lost 48 pounds without trying. I didn’t exercise at all. I couldn’t my feet were so tired. Of course, it was FL from August-January. I remember one day was 110 deg. and 98% humidity. Every body cried that day, little children would weep. I felt so bad about their vacations being ruined by weather. I was on fire the whole time. My appetite was nothing. I wouldn’t drink cold water, developed a terrible aversion to it, I got the worst stomach pains from cold water. The only real stress was with my room mates, so going to work was the best part. I loved being in the park interacting with people and solving problems (protein spills are a problem.)
Now, I have to schedule in exercise. When I do, I always see dogs in their yards. They run up to me, wagging their tales, barking up a storm, and desperate for interaction and activity. They look so sad when I keep going and they must stay behind.
2. Pets on grains: I always put on weight with corn. I wonder if the pups have the same problem?
3. Vegetable oil: I always put on weight with just about any vegetable oil. I can have ice cream (real, not fake with weird stuff in it.)
4. Flavor enhancers: Once I gave up processed weirdness, I no longer felt compelled to eat beyond satiety. No more eating if I wasn’t hungry.
5. I have read about the use of constant available food to relieve/heal eating disorders. The idea (I forget where I read this.) is that you carry good, tasty food with you all the time and that eating is never reprimanded ever. That idea, that all food was good and that you didn’t need to associate any kind of emotion with it was freeing. I don’t really carry food myself (well, ok, I do have a nut bar in my bag or some fruit.) I just tell myself, I can eat anything I want. Then, I wait to find out what that actually is, sometimes its steak, sometimes its cheese cake or sometimes its an ice cream.
The other thought I had, is (more reference to the last post.) do we really feel compelled to eat these cheap to produce foods because its part of the advertising, often people want to do what is ?forbidden?. By labeling foods as good or bad we create mystic where maybe there just shouldn’t be any at all.
6. Artificial lighting elevates cortisol. OMG! Does that extend to the light on my computer monitor???
So, why does petting a dog make me feel so good? I mean, I know he is kind of smelly, licks my face sometimes (I’m not wearing peanut butter, honest!)
7. I would not assume the dog was experiencing seizures as an emotional connection but rather that their was something in the house or that they were ingesting causing the problem. That said, whenever my Dad is feeling poorly, I get nauseous first.
6. This has been posted before (madMUHHH), but is really cool: http://stereopsis.com/flux/
Interesting about unnatural light and cortisol. Maybe that's part of why obesity rates are so high here in AK? (Although AK also, bizarrely, has the highest per capita ice cream consumption in the US.)
"But pets are fully tuned into the emotional state of the ?pack leader? (pronounced in a Mexican accent ? ?Pock Lead-Air?" I see what you did there!
Though, I would like to see the proof for this: "We know it does not cause obesity in humans ? grain consumption is strongly associated with leanness not obesity". I can see the relation for rice, of course, but it becomes murkier for something like wheat. No all grains are equal of course.
Also, I have a dog, and she's very lean. And, more importantly, she would rather gorge on meat or eggs (even raisins and potatoes) than eat her pet food any day. Maybe it's because, here in colombia, pet food is not as palatable. Anyway, I really doubt animals in the wild don't enjoy their food, as you suggested.
Lastly, about food restriction, you said " They also tend to limit food consumption, have set feedings that are often spaced very far apart, and otherwise remove a pet from its natural eating cues". I really don't see how that would be much different from the state of things in the wild. It's not like one can catch caribou 3 times a day. More specifically, I doubt the problem is that the feedings are set "too far apart".
"I haven’t carefully studied the ingredient list of the top selling brands of pet food" ============== 'I haven't looked at the ingredients. I don't know what I'm talking about.'
"but after entering the household ? where both father and daughter suffered from seizures, the dog began having seizures too. Pretty wild stuff." OK I'm really open to an emotional reason here, but doesn't it seem much more likely that something toxic in the house is giving everyone in it seizures? I'm thinking radon, radiation from power lines or transformers, cell phone towers, power plants…
I feed my two dogs, a female German Shepherd mix and a male Cathoula leopard, raw meat – 95% raw chicken thighs (bone included) with the rest being eggs and guts (liver, kidney, heart, etc). I started them on it about 9 months ago and they thoroughly enjoy it. My GSD hated the kibble and would eat it as it was the only thing I would feed her. She loves the raw chicken and scarfs it down every day. You don't have to 'cook' for the animals. A 'raw meaty bones' diet (not BARF) is the best way to feed your carnivorous animals. There is a yahoo group http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/RawMeatyBones/ that is a great group to get help on changing your animals over to this way of eating. Their diet has to have bones in it, and raw bones from non weight bearing portions are best. The Cathoula would have ear infections every 3-4 months but since I started him on the raw, no infections. My GSD has a growth on her back which has slowly decreased over the past months. When I pointed the growth out to my vet, he said that we would worry about it if grew more.
The cost is the same as the expensive prescription dog food I had them on for the past two years for ear infections in the Catahoula. I look for sales and have never paid more than 1.20/pound for their food. I buy the chicken from the regular grocery store out of the meat section. I prep the food a bit for them, but you really don't have to.
I did try my two cats on it and they didn't like it at all, so I've kept them on the kibble. One cat is 16 years old but doesn't act like it. The other is 10 years old. Both in good shape as I've always fed them the best dry cat food I could afford for them. Right now one of them is sitting on my lap purring away.
AAAHAHAHAHA! When you mentioned no Barf diet, I thought of this instead!
PUT YOUR ANIMALS ON THE ‘BARF’ DIET!!
Bones Are Real Food!!!
The BARF Diet For Animals…I smell an e-book…
Haha- I had my dog on a primarily bones and raw meat diet for a while. It was ok, but she seemed just as happy and successful on a mixed cooked plant and animal food diet, with plenty of bones to chew on when she wanted them.
If you supplement a dog's diet of processed dog food with real food, they will love you more…I'm talking meat, eggs, fruit and veggies. Dogs LOVE some fruit and veggies they go crazy for (and some fruit and veggies they don't like at all), despite the whole thing about them being carnivores. My dog went crazy for meat (cooked, not raw), but also went crazy for apples. She also liked raw celery, which I think she liked because of the natural saltiness. The only vegetables she never liked were the leafy kind. Which isn't surprising….
Many dogs feel like a prisoner because all they ever eat in their life is dry dog food…they could still eat the dog food, but if you give them real tasty food with moisture in it…it makes their life much better, and deepens the connection the animal feels to you.
I would guess that the dog feed forms the problem. Dogs and cats are carnivores. When fed carbohydrates they fatten, just like their bosses.
I have lived with many dogs of different breeds. Even on the same diet and living in the same environment they can have very different body composition depending on the breed. Some would be lean and the other fat, even when they are eating the same food.
Dry dog food is disgusting. There is a reason most dogs stink like wet corn chips. Most people would be fat and sick if they ate nothing but Fritos with a little human junk food on top. Especially if they just sat around all day and got no exercise.
It is no secret that animals get fat when they eat too many calories of pure junk food and get no exercise. There is no need for all the other explanations!
Have you guys been reading Don Matesz new blog posts? They have been pretty good. He is moving in the direction that REAL paleo is low fat and high starch. He just wrote on the difference between starch and sugar too.
I predict a new high carb/ low fat trend in the Paleo world!
It's not just pets but other animals that live around humans and eat our food, like squirrels and, around here, bears.
Check this:
"Urban Black Bears 'Live Fast, Die Young'
ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2008) ? Black bears that live around urban areas weigh more, get pregnant at a younger age, and are more likely to die violent deaths, according to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080930135301.htm
It's hard, but possible, to get a cat food without grains, soy, or vegetable oil. I get my cats "Taste of the Wild" with venison and salmon. It contains sweet potatoes and blueberries, which I'm not sure are feline staples in the wild, either. Although one of my cats really likes tomatoes, corn on the cob, watermelon, peas, and cucumbers.
Some pet owners swear it's cooked food that's the culprit. This makes a bit of sense. Domestic dogs co-evolved with humans. Humans have been eating cooked food for as long as we've been human, but the evolutionary timeline for dogs is much shorter – about 10,000 years, from what I remember (could be wrong here). Maybe dogs haven't completely adapted. With domestic cats, the timeline's about 5,000 years. They started to hang around once we got settled and stored grains, which attracted rodents.
One thing I do believe about cooked food is that it may increase palatability, which could lead to obesity, a la Stephan Guyenet's recent blogs.
At least it increases palatability for me.
I've noticed that my cats do seem to lose and gain weight along with me. I think there's something to this.
My sister's dog used to be fat. Then she switched it to a diet of meat (with organs), along with some brown rice and squash. She also adds some supplements and bone meal. The dog is very lean now. It's all cooked food, but it's not processed at all. I think that's the most important distinction. And the fact that it's mostly meat.
Flouridated water did occur to me, too. Although, in the case of my sister's dog, the food was what made the difference. The dog still drinks the regular tap water.
Oh, and the fact that there's no vegetable oil in the dog's new diet. I think that makes a huge difference, too, honestly. The biggest correlation I see between humans and obesity among people I know is veg oil (fried foods mostly) and junk food. I could see the same being true of dogs.
and yet some people like my husband can eat vegetable oil and junk food to appetite and not go above his weight set point.
JT, I just read a few of the posts, good stuff. To me, this was always the biggest problem with the paleo philosophy. I cannot see people gorging on meat only when they could easily gather fruit and some tubers. Today's hunter gatherer tribes always seem to be higher carb from what I can tell.
I think most dogs are overweight just because their owners give them too much to eat. Can't be that hard to adjust their intake of food! My dogs have never been overweight. I also try and give my dog a healthy kibble. They are improving the quality of dog food and I finally found one with real animal fat in it instead of a seed oil.
JT, you said –
"I have lived with many dogs of different breeds. Even on the same diet and living in the same environment they can have very different body composition depending on the breed. Some would be lean and the other fat, even when they are eating the same food.
Dry dog food is disgusting. There is a reason most dogs stink like wet corn chips. Most people would be fat and sick if they ate nothing but Fritos with a little human junk food on top. Especially if they just sat around all day and got no exercise.
It is no secret that animals get fat when they eat too many calories of pure junk food and get no exercise. There is no need for all the other explanations!"
How then do you explain your dogs that got fat? Is it the breed or the diet and lifestyle? Or both? Did you feed them doggie junk? I think some explanation is needed.
Princess,
I think it is all of those things, but especially the breed. No I didn't give them lots of doggie junk. Mostly just dog food and some leftover people food. The bull breeds that I have had all stayed really lean and muscular even with almost no exercise because they didn't like it much. They just wanted to lay around all day.
Amy,
Yeah, I am convinced the real paleo diet that is optimal for man is high starch. Low carbers are too weak to have made it in nature. They also have such a low libido they never would have reproduced and humans would have gone extinct.
Jane,
I know a lot of people like that. His body just regulates his appetite without any conscious effort. People like this can eat whatever kinds of food they want because their body will naturally stop the hunger signals at a certain point.
So then, it's not as simple as diet and lifestyle. And just as with humans, it's more complicated. Within the one family with the same exact healthy diet and lifestyle, body composition and metabolism can be very different. I think it's wrong to just judge pets or their owners and say it's because they are greedy and lazy if they are fat or as disciplined and hard working if one is thin. You cannot make sweeping statements like that without real life experience contradicting you at some point.
Princess,
I dont know what sweeping statements you are talking about. The dogs were different breeds and so they would completely different no matter what the diet is. It is not the same as huimans coning from the same family. I have had pitbulls, chihuahuas, bulldogs, and many other breeds. They will not look the same no matter what I fed them. It is a lot easier to fatten up an english bulldog than it is a pitbull or a chihuahuas, but I still could have fattened them up too if I let them "intuitively" eat all the icecream and cheeseburgers they wanted, so diet and lifestyle are a big part of it.
But you are right, some people and dogs are naturally skinny and some are fat. If you want to change the only option is to change your diet and lifestyle. It is not a moral choice like you suggest, but a matter of taste, and not good or bad.
Matt, in the last point you talked about beliefs–you might find cellular biologist, Dr. Bruce Lipton's book "Biology of Belief" interesting… I think it has more effect than any other factor on every known health issue.
Interesting article.
tm
How is Rover these days?
Stancel, that's interesting that your dog likes celery. When we were little, my cousin's dog (a retriever) would nose the celery bits out of any leftovers we gave her and they would be all around her bowl when she was done.
I suspect that the fluoride in the water is what is giving so many pets thyroid problems.
MATT-
Good post. I myself have been thinking a lot about the subject of late, since I have a 6 months old dog. She is a Prazsky Krysarik. Ever since I got her, I've been thinking heavily about which diet would be the best for for her. Everyday she gets half a cup of raw milk. She loves that stuff! She has free access to dry dog food (with no additives or colors) I occasionally feed her liver, coconut oil and give her leftovers of meat bones. All her treats are natural and organic (pure meat) She also loves carrots and eats grapes too. I plan on buying more organ meats for her in the future so that will be her main source of food. On top of that she will ALWAYS have a bowl of dry dog food standing so she will never feel deprived. I have never and will never weigh her food. Always let her eat to appetite.
One thing I have noticed is that she LOVES the cats food! At first I thought it was a matter of dominance that stole food from the cat but after experimenting with mixing some cat food in her own bowl, I am not so sure anymore. seems like she likes the cats food more than her own. It's the same brand, same ingredients but not the same % protein, fat, carbs… Interesting.. I'm planning on mixing some of the cats food in hers.. She might have a nose for something she's missing in her own diet.
Btw, I also took her temperature (yes, I'm 180 damaged) and NO I didn't pop it in her cherry! I did an under armpit-thing. Her temperature is 38 degrees all the time! She is steaming hot! I haven't taken my cats temperature -he is a little harder to hold still but stay tuned ;-)
We have bullmastiffs and our first dog was raised from a puppy on dry food and she just did not thrive on it. Fortunately we found a vet that introduced us to the raw diet and she improved immensely. Our male was brought up on the raw diet as soon as we got him home. I make my own vegetable mash with organic vegetables and mix it with various kinds of meat with lots of bone in it such as chicken, rabbit, lamb, turkey/duck necks. I use a few supplements – various herbs, etc. and he is doing awesome. He is going to be 10 this year and you wouldn't know it.
Fuck Matt my dog better not get leukemia now like mommy. He eats grain free meat based food, raw bison liver,avocados etc. Thin strong dude. I run or walk him ah hour aday. He is very happy. Like his mommy.
In other news I am now 52. Dont be jealous. Feeling great, had gummy bears for breakfast.
Xo
Da Haggy One
And his bowl is Always Full. Also like his mommy ;-)
CADreamin-
Thanks for your well thought-out response.
Helen-
I have lived in proximity to lots of bears and wildlife and factored that into my opinions as well. I remember also in college a squirrel that hung out by the snack bar. He was 3-4 times the size of a normal squirrel and totally crazy looking. He would hang out and beg for french fries. Everyone loved throwing french fries at that thing, especially me. Little did I know I was subconsciously doing research.
Matezcesezz, or however you spell his name…
Humans with access to carbohydrates always ate lots of carbohydrates. That has always been the logic I've used as guidance to what is biologically appropriate for our species.
Sheila-
So you're saying you have a hot dog? I knew there was something strange about you. That explains the muscles and the deep voice :)
I don't why, but you are definitely the funnest person to mess with.
JT-
It's interesting in monkey experiments that they can make them obese by giving them an unlimited supply to highly palatable modern human foods and restricting their physical activity. They can do this with just about every "breed/species." But this doesn't happen if they can move normally or if the food is regular chow or whatever. Plus, the SAD diet they give them is always high in PUFA. I remember seeing one article and the monkeys were given a 200g peanut butter snack every day for example.
Thanks for throwing out the raw food theme too everyone. I don't think it's so much that it is is raw as that it is unprocessed and lacks all the industrial ingredients and flavor enhancers of typical pet food.
Same as with humans that follow a raw diet. Raw food diets are very unpalatable compared to a cooked food diet, and you absorb far fewer calories from raw food as opposed to cooked food. This is especially true of plant matter.
In the gorilla post I did a few months back for example, the gorillas were switched to tons of lettuces and other "browse," which only 50% of can be assimilated. The gorillas ate twice as many calories but lost weight, but this was partly because they weren't absorbing the calories like they did on dry gorilla "biscuits."
Anyway, I think Sheila has what sounds to me to be the ultimate and most practical pet nutrition plan.
MATT-
Ha! I win! ;-P
Hot dog -why didn't I think of that??
Be careful I don't start throwing my hot dog around in the air, until I take off and fly to you, start growling at you with my deep voice and slap you with my big muscles… hey that didn't really came out right..
When we got our lab puppy 7 years ago he was obsessed with food – would run at it and wolf it all down in 2 seconds and go crazy with excitement at feeding time. Our vet diagnosed an eating disorder and had us give him his food, wait 10 minutes, give him another bowl of food, wait 10 minutes, give him another bowl of food etc until he didn't want any more and then do the same again at his next feeding time. Of course the first time we did this he could barely move his little tummy was so full and we started to doubt our vet but within 3 days of doing this he was cured. He loves his food (he is a lab after all) but is not food obsessed at all and will quite often reject table leftovers I offer him.
I think what dinosaur is saying is EXACTLY what humans need to do to stop eating mindlessly. Really feeling your limit, and not restricting at all, that's the ticket.
xo
happy memorial day beyotches
deb
JT,
you said "Amy, Yeah I am conviced the real paleo diet that is optimal for man is high starch. Low carbers are too weak to have made it in nature. They also have such a low libido they never would have reproduced and humans would have gone extinct."
What about Inuit
The inuit also ate the entire beast, and a part of that is…
*drum rolls*
The thyroid gland. Basically the inuits self medicate with thyroid hormones. This actually fits rather well with what I’ve been hearing about many Paleoers who seem to flourish only when they are also taking thyroid hormones alongside their diet.
Also, very few paleo people go the full nine yards and eat the entire bloody beast and just pick the best parts. The original hunter gatherers ate what they could get, and in many cases that meant eating mice, rats, fowl, hares, and so on. Our ancestors did not have the good luck of being able to go to their local supplier and get the best ribs.
This is why the Paleo diet is stupid. It talks about how our ancestors ate, but at the same time they talk about how our ancestors would eat if they had access to Wal-Mart and other places. The dissonance going on there is absurd. Plus, scientists are always discovering that we have been thriving on agriculture much longer than most expected, but that usually gets dismissed as “scientific propaganda” probably.
Now, the biggest plus of Paleo is the avoidance of vegetable oils and focus on real food. That is a plus. However, the biggest failing it has is that it is really damn high in phosphorus and iron, which is bad in the wrong context.
I'm afraid I have to contest the whole "more palletable foods" theory, at least for the time being. I have a few friends with what I would consider "perfect" metabolisms and they eat all the same shit anyone else would eat, as well as drink beer frequently (and have been living this lifestyle for years), yet they mantain ~10% body fat, probably less.
I've noticed that the more often I eat tastier food the less hungry it makes me. Considering potatos, then rice, then fruit/juice did this very same thing to me, i would assume that the whole "eating more because it's tastier therefore gain more weight and it'll never even out" theory seems to only apply to individuals with poor thyroid function/metabolism.
not saying a person wouldn't eventually "burn" themselves out metabolically after a time, but I use those people as my standard seeing as I'm trying t obe as "good" as them.
-Anonymous
Anonymous,
Like Matt said, when people have a choice of eating carbs they eat carbs. The Inuit didn't have a choice – nor did any competing tribes in the area.
Jim,
The Inuit survived and reproduced though
if there is a real or ideal paleo diet i think it is both high starch and fat. there is no doubt in my mind from my experience and observation that plently of both gives the best energy and a human in perfect health, active all day could and would want to eat both. macronutrient ratio is always going to change but it ideally wouldn't be "low" in either.
Wow, off topic again, I just realized there could be a link between ASPARTAME and hyperthyroidism, which I have. It makes so much sense because diet soda has been all I drink and it is filled with aspartame. UGH!!! I'm going to immediately avoid aspartame completely, and sucralose and everything, except maybe stevia…but soda companies aren't usually using that yet. I'll just drink water.
I stopped taking the beta blockers because my blood pressure isn't high, and it makes me gain weight….I would love if cutting out aspartame can stop me from having to take FAT GAINING meds and destroy my thyroid with RAI/thyroidectomy and become permanently hypo like doctors probably want me to be. I have heard of people gaining so much weight through "treatment" because the treatment kills their metabolism.
I'm going to fight this…because I don't want any of their conventional "treatment", I don't want to kill my metabolism and have to starve myself to lose weight or keep myself from gaining weight.
I'll make them test my thyroid again before I even consider taking their meds or attacking my thyroid with radioactive iodine. If it's lower after detoxing aspartame….then that stuff should be banned, like cyclamates were. While we're at it ban sucralose too
Anonymous,
Yeah, well, JT was exaggerating. Better to just reduce what he was saying to undo the exaggeration than to assume the opposite of what he said is true.
JT, do you have an email address? I'd like to email you about my weight loss goals and see if you would be willing to give me any advice. Thanks :)
Stancel,
I'm curious about your hyperthyroidism. What symptoms did you have that caused you to get diagnosed? You mentioned wanting to drop the Beta-Blocker. Was that for a high resting heart rate?
The reason I ask is because I've noticed that my resting heart-rate is generally in the 90's to 100's. I have normal blood pressure, however. I gave blood about 10 days ago and when they told me my heart rate, it was surprisingly high. I started checking regularly and I was consistently in the 100's even when just sitting on the couch for an hour. I'm concerned, and am working with an "alternative" health practioner to figure out what's going on. Anyone with input or thoughts on this is appreciated.
My 15 year old pit bull is a big Ray Peat fan! Seriously, about a year ago, I decided to stop feeding my dog "dog food" and switch her to people food. She had been fed a high end dry dog food all of her life, which seemed to keep her fit and healthy, until I noticed around her 14th year, she started developing little black skin tags all over her body. I figured maybe she was reacting to the corn in the dog food and since I was following the Paleo diet at the time, I started feeding her what I was eating. Boy, was she happy about THAT decision. She was SO excited when I would start preparing my dinner, which was also HER dinner, it made me feel positively guilty about giving her that boring old dry dog food all of her life. (Although I always supplemented it with lots of healthy people food treats throughout the day.)
Sure enough, on the Paleo diet, the black skin tags shrunk considerably in size and no more new ones appeared, so the grain free experiment was a success. She still had the other "old dog" symptoms of moving slowly and being a bit unsteady on her feet, no longer willing to jump up on the couch or beds, as she used to do, and moaning and groaning whenever she would get up or lie down on her $100 L.L. Bean orthopedic dog bed.
Fast forward to 6 months later when my thyroid was barely functioning on Paleo, I wasn't losing weight, felt like crap, and had developed food sensitivities to practically everything besides water. Thank God someone told me about Ray Peat and I switched to that. In the 7 months since I have been following Peat's recommendations, I have experienced multiple improvements in my health, and my temp. went from a high of 97.4 to 98.7 each day. I always gained a lot of muscle mass (gained 11 pounds but measurements are the same or smaller) and I have a lot more strength and energy. But was are doing about PETS here so…
My pit bull got a whole new lease on life following Ray Peat's dietary recommendations. She now runs around like the crazy dog she was at the age of 2 or 3! She leaps onto beds and couches regularly with the greatest of ease. No more moaning and groaning – ever. And she just LOVES the food! (Especially the vanilla Haagen Dazs!) :-)
I also found it interesting about the idea of dogs developing the ailments of their people family. Last year I developed a lot of health problems due to living in a home contaminated with live mold. (It was hidden behind the drywall and under the subflooring so we couldn't see it or smell it.) I started having beathing problems, edema problems, skin rashes, etc. but I would always feel 100% better anytime I left the house for a couple of hours.
Interestingly, during that time, my pit bull also developed health problems and started having asthma attacks. Who knew dogs could have asthma attacks. She would walk by a room (where the mold was, which we did not know at the time) and start wheezing and wheezing. At first I was afraid she was going to expire during these attacks, but they would subside after a minute or two!
We don't live there now but the poor pooch and I are still afflicted and when we go for walks, she will sniff a pile of leaves and have an asthma attack. And my tongue starts burning and I have trouble breathing whenever I am in the presence of mold.
Of course you could say the whole situation was purely environmental, but my husband did not develop these symptoms, just my dog and me. Interesting.
P.S. Sorry for the typos in the previous post. I really do speak English. I was just too lazy to proof read!
Well, it's happened to me – virgin coconut oil, which I loved last week, now tastes gross. Very strange, but I'd read about it from people here, so I know I'm not crazy. Question, though: since we're about intuitive eating, I wonder about the wisdom of switching to refined oil. If I'm put off by the "natural" oil, maybe I'm put off for a reason, and maybe that reason applies to the refined, then maybe I shouldn't be eating it, either, even if the procession removes the indicators maybe it doesn't remove the underlying reason the oil is "bad" and this sentence is long
Jim get Tropical Traditions expeller pressed coconut oil. Super for cooking and will not give you the coconut oil yuks. Online only.
Jim,
Get refined coconut oil. Coconuts and their oil are very stable, comparatively speaking, so the refined stuff is fine… and it's cheaper :-) Plus it tastes better (very mild flavor) and is great for cooking. I love it. I like it more than butter on my popcorn.
Paying extra for the *virgin* stuff is a waste of money. And, yes, virgin also does start to taste gross after a while.
Where is the supa pufa Ray May finale??
GFM and AS,
Thanks – and I do have the refined oil – but what I was trying to say was this: What if our intuition correctly steers us away from unrefined oil, but is tricked by the processing of the refined version? That is, what if whatever is "wrong" with virgin oil is still wrong with refined oil?
I'm not saying this is a big deal or something to be scared of, I'm just wondering about the idea that our intuition is accurate with natural foods and inaccurate with unnatural foods.
Kirk-
I'm working on it buddy. A day late I know, but I'm workin' on it. Vacated the ol' Florida apartment yesterday and didn't have much juice left for writing like I had planned.
Jim-
Try the refined oil and see if your body's intuition rejects that. Odds are it is something in the virgin oil that is irritating you after too much exposure. Many of those irritants are absent from the refined oil. You don't need much though to get coconut oil's benefits. A tablespoon a few times per week is usually enough to get some positives from it. But it's not like it is a dietary requirement or anything.
Cathy-
Love the "Peat" bull story. Interestingly, the Dog Whisperer prounounces pit bull exactly like that haha.
Ahh, Cesar Millan- hippies like me don't like him. See here: tinyurl.com/cesarnytimes and here tinyurl.com/anthropikdogs
For me I just get kind of a bad vibe from the dude, though he seems to be real effective.
Cool post, Matty. Hope that relocation is going well. Damn you, by the way. I spent most of the last couple years 20 minutes east of the WV border, and you wait til I go back to Yankee-land to come out that way. Have fun out there, though. Whereabouts in WV are you going to be?
The idea of an emotional connection between people and their pets makes sense to me. Rupert Sheldrake wrote a whole book about the freaky ways that shows up sometimes. 'Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals.' Last year when I got real into reading about homeopathy, I found this article as well: tinyurl.com/180doggies
In it, a woman brings her cat to the doc to get checked on, and then starts talking about the stuff in her own life that's stressing her out, and the cat calms down. In other words, the cat reflected back the stuff she was experiencing because otherwise the lady wouldn't have taken care of herself. Pretty cool idea.
I like that ED treatment of plenty of food at all times to break that reward cycle. Right on.
We have a yorkie-cheewawa mix that loves anything but dog food. I have tried the 50 lb $6 bag of Ol' Roy and the $50/bag 6 lb bag of organic whole grain, grass fed salmon, CLO insfused food from Petsmart, and he hates it all. As long as you feed him from the table, he will eat till he looks like a little malnourished pot belly kid. When Leslie's mom comes to visit he never touches his food. He gets all his nutrition from Jack's biscuit n gravy. The only time he will eat his dog food is when there's absolutely nothing else. He must have good temps though cause he never gains any weight. I've been around other inside dogs that have never eaten from the table and they are oblivious to anything but dog food. Our dog has grabbed food out of my nephew's hand before. OYGPYNGB (Once you go processed, you never go back)
I'll be in Wheeling. Don't be dissin' on the Dog Whisperer though. He's the man. I've seen him perform with dogs in person. It was awesome. He is funny, and the real deal yo. Like Johnny Lawrence and his mutt.
He's full blooded Yorhuahua. You'd have some mighty bloody ankles if he heard you say the M-word.
Jim,
I didn't assume the opposite of what he said was true.
Just throwing this out there, on JT's comment that the "new" Paleo was going to be high carb/low fat…
Was doing a little history reading over the week-end about Indian wars fought over wild rice grounds and maple sugar grounds. I always thought the wars were about competition for game, but no, both groups had plenty of access to game…they were fighting over carbs. This fits in very well with Matt's argument that when groups have access to carbs they will eat them. In this case fighting dozens of battles over decades to get carbs when none other are available.
Grooming our pets simply mean that we’re taking good care of their health by keeping an eye on hygiene. Interesting & Useful Stuff.
Grooming our pets simply mean that we’re taking good care of their health by keeping an eye on hygiene. Interesting & Useful Stuff.
Dogs and cats are carnivores. Carnivores eat the raw carcasses of other animals.
All commercial pet "food" is cooked and contain carbohydrates. Starches (rice, potato, peas) are in vogue now.
Humans have been eating grains (to our detriment) for (depending on who you talk to), 5000 – 100,000 years. Grains in pet "food" have only been around for about 70 years.
Canines have a much shorter GI tract, designed to move putrid and rotting meat/bone through it quickly (minimizing risk from bacterium), too quickly to digest carbohydrate. The pH of their gut is much more acidic than that of humans, and is capable of and designed to dissolve hard bone within hours.
Dogs have ZERO requirement for carbohydrate of any kind, period! A bold statement? I have two dogs who never eat carbohydrate, ever! My old girl will be 16 years old July 14, she's been eating raw for 7 years.
Western Disease in pets is caused by one thing and one thing only, commercial pet "food". in many cases (if too much damage hasn't already been done), Western Disease can be cured and reversed by feeding a Raw Meaty Bones & offal diet. Tom Lonsdale has a couple of great books on the subject.
Dogs and cats are carnivores. Carnivores eat the raw carcasses of other animals.
All commercial pet "food" is cooked and contain carbohydrates. Starches (rice, potato, peas) are in vogue now.
Humans have been eating grains (to our detriment) for (depending on who you talk to), 5000 – 100,000 years. Grains in pet "food" have only been around for about 70 years.
Canines have a much shorter GI tract, designed to move putrid and rotting meat/bone through it quickly (minimizing risk from bacterium), too quickly to digest carbohydrate. The pH of their gut is much more acidic than that of humans, and is capable of and designed to dissolve hard bone within hours.
Dogs have ZERO requirement for carbohydrate of any kind, period! A bold statement? I have two dogs who never eat carbohydrate, ever! My old girl will be 16 years old July 14, she's been eating raw for 7 years.
Western Disease in pets is caused by one thing and one thing only, commercial pet "food". in many cases (if too much damage hasn't already been done), Western Disease can be cured and reversed by feeding a Raw Meaty Bones & offal diet. Tom Lonsdale has a couple of great books on the subject.
Speaking of dogs and cats…
http://leerburg.com/Photos/mybed.jpg
P.S. You gotta look at the whole picture.
Lack of grounding…. another important piece of the puzzle.
Another thought – selective breeding. maybe it’s just me, but dogs seem more and more “human” these days – looking someone in the eye when they love them, mourning for extremely long periods, etc. could selective breeding for “human” characteristics play into dogs getting human diseases?
MTHFR gene mutations are most likely playing a significant role in human disease. Especially in an era where all kinds of chemicals are everywhere, having an impaired ability to detoxify is probably an extremely huge burden. Folate fortification of foods is also extremely common, and if you have problems converting it into L-methylfolate, that can probably cause problems by building up in your system and burdening it. I’ve tested compound heterozygous for the C677T and A1298C MTHFR gene mutations, have been taking L-methylfolate, methylcobalamin and P-5-P for months now and have been feeling a lot better for it. The first thing I noticed was my episodes of extreme rage starting to rapidly subside.
On another topic: I haven’t used fluoridated toothpaste for years now. I’ve been using magnesium oil (sprayed onto a toothbrush) to brush my teeth for at least 3 years now. I mostly drink pure fruit juice (not from concentrate) when I’m thirsty, either grape or orange, and if I really am craving plain water for whatever reason, I drink distilled. I haven’t used shampoo in years and my hair has been doing a lot better ever since, I shower a lot less than I used to and don’t use commercial scented soaps (and I smell fine), and I use magnesium oil for deodorant. My acne also cleared up after I started eliminating polyunsaturated fats and stopped washing my face.
Daily personal care products like toothpaste, soap, mouthwash, and deodorant are probably a smaller part of the puzzle, but maybe bigger than we’d think. This is stuff we’re exposing ourselves to on a daily basis. I think it’s healthier and also way less expensive and way more convenient to go a natural route with this stuff.
At the end of the day, though, hormone disruption seems to be the name of the game. Vitamins and minerals in adequate amounts are essential for proper hormone functioning. Toxic chemicals disrupt proper hormone functioning. Regular exercise (done intelligently) has a very positive effect on proper hormone functioning. Polyunsaturated fats seem to have a ton of properties that disrupt proper hormone functioning. Artificial light can interfere with proper hormone functioning. The list goes on and on, and hormones seem to one of the root problems, if not the root problem itself.
I’m reminded of that “Stress vs. Stress Response” article you did a while back. I think disease is what happens when stressors exceed our body’s ability to handle stress. What you have today is a greatly diminished capacity in people to handle stress with a huge rise in stressors. The two ways to deal with this are reducing the exposure to stressors and enhancing our body’s ability to deal with stress.
It’s probably easiest to look at stress from a hormonal standpoint and take it from there. It’s impossible to isolate every single variable, but that at least gives you some solid ground to stand on. A healthy diet is a simpler concept if you define “healthy” as supporting proper hormonal balance, and a “healthy” lifestyle as doing the same.
LOL at that picture.
btw does somebody know how many lumen/lux of artificial light it would take to mess with your circadian rhythm? I have Flux installed on my computer but I think the Iphone is still messing with me grrr
I actually just researched an awful lot into cat diets and obesity (and smelliness, good golly molly, the smelliness…), and I think a lot of your points are correct. We in the West seem to anthropomorphize our pets and feed them species inappropriate diets, giving obligate carnivores like cats grains, fruits, and vegetables, none of which they need or should have.
I adopted a cat, flew her around the world, and then had to leave her with my mother for nearly a year due to exigent circumstances (Fukushima, anyone?). When I got back to her, she was on a diet of high-carb kibble, and she smelled disgusting (her breath, literally, smelled like shit) and had put on weight, looking like she was headed towards the rampant obesity of my mother’s other cats. I did a fair amount of research, and she’s now on a half-raw diet of mostly poultry (due to add rabbit in once we’re done moving) including cartilage and bone. The smell was gone within about 18 hours of transitioning, and after she filled three litterboxes in under 2 days, even her feces isn’t offensive smelling, unless you’re right by the litterbox. She’s also leaning out.