Suspected IMHA for Macy and waiting on official blood work results – Page 2

Keymaster

Lynette,
You have to be careful what you buy. Unscrupulous people know how desperate dog owners can be to save their dog and they will prey on that panic by offering very expensive promises that their product will cure your dog. There is not one thing on the market that will do that. And, in fact, many of these products can actually make your dog worse.

One particular ingredient that is touted often is Kelp, seaweed. They claim that it has many health benefits. The risk with this natural product is that it can contain variable levels of iodine, because it is harvested naturally. (It can also absorb toxic elements from the water where it is harvested, like lead.)

Iodine, in trace amounts, is important in human thyroid health. Canines need it too but in even smaller trace amounts. The risk with even just a little too much is that it can cause damage to the thyroid gland which can lead to an acceleration of a condition called canine autoimmune thyroiditis. This is a gradual destruction of the thyroid gland and will make a dog very ill.

Iodine, unfortunately, is an ingredient (sometimes in too large of a dose) in far too many canine supplements and dog foods. Adding more to what may already be too much by supplementing will cause damage to the canine thyroid.

Our experience is that the best way to treat these very sick dogs is to remove as many suspect supplements and ingredients from the diet as possible. We can’t know what is interacting and possibly causing worse symptoms. Many owners do not know the some of the kinds of foods that humans eat can be hazardous to dogs. They think since it is good in our diet, it must be good for dogs.

If you wish to supplement right now one of the recommendations by Dr. Dodds is Pet-Tinic. You can also buy “look-a-likes” for Pet-Tinic like Doc Roy’s B STRONG.

Or alternatively you could cook up a tiny bit of liver and give her a small piece once a day. The guideline is about 1 ounce per 10 pounds of body weight per week. So my dogs at around 90lbs would get about 9 ounces per week (a finger sized piece a day). This is real food and it has enormous amounts of nutrition.

Real food is always going to provide trace minerals and vitamins that you can actually determine the amount by looking a food’s nutrition table. I was NEVER able to find an appropriate nutrition table for bio-prep. They only said that because it was a natural product they couldn’t provide that kind of information because it was too variable. That’s dangerous.
my best
patrice

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