Doubting my vet's food choice

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CyclopsCat

CyclopsCat

Member Since 2015
My cat is a 4 1/2 yr male, and when his levels were tested yesterday they were:
Fructosamine: 520 or 550
Sugar level: 215

The vet put him on 3/4 cups of W/D dry food a day, and four units of insulin twice a day. Does this sound correct? Informed opinions only please. I know that sounds *****y, but I'm already insanely overwhelmed.
 
The most important thing you can do for your diabetic cat is get him onto a low carb (less than 10%) canned or raw diet...The "prescription" foods, especially W/D are way too high in carbs and ALL dry food is a problem just because our sugarcats need all the water we can get into them to help protect their kidneys. W/D is 35% carbs....WAY too high and one of the main ingredients in W/D is "powdered Cellulous"....that's a nice way of saying it's sawdust!

On the website "Feeding your Cat" there's a lot of great information on why canned or raw is best to feed any cat in within that site there's a Food Chart that lists a lot of the foods available and their carb percentage (Column C)

A lot of us feed Friskies pate's or Fancy Feast Classics because they're under 10% carbs and affordable.

The MOST important thing though is if you reduce the amount of carbs you're feeding, you need to be home testing your cat so you can monitor how dropping the carbs effects the amount of insulin you're giving.

4U is a very high amount for most cats to begin with, but because you're feeding a very high carb food right now, he's probably requiring that high of a dose. By reducing the amount of carbs he's eating, his insulin dose will come down too...maybe quite quickly!

I strongly suggest you get a human meter and test strips and learn to home test your baby. WalMart carries a Relion Brand of meters (about $15) called Confirm and Micro....the strips for those 2 meters are the same and cost $35.88 per 100 strips

We can help teach you how to home test...it's really not hard and by doing it, you're really taking control of your kitty's diabetes. Information is the best thing you can get to fight this disease and home testing is a very valuable part of that information

What insulin are you using??
 
Hi Arianna,

Following on from Chris's post, I'd like to echo her advice that you must not change your cat's food from w/d to a low carb choice before you start home testing. Blood glucose levels will most likely start to plummet from the very beginning of the transition and your current insulin dose will therefore very likely be far too high. I speak from personal experience. In the early stages of her treatment Saoirse was prescribed w/d Dry. I was not one bit happy about the diagnosing vet's choice because it's like feeding Crunchy Nut Cornflakes to a human diabetic. (We switched vet practices shortly after.) She was also prescribed 3 units of Caninsulin twice a day. From the beginning of Saoirse's transition to low carb wet food I had to reduce Saoirse's insulin dose day after day; and 10 days after the start of the food switch her dose was down to 0.5 units every 12 hours. Thereafter I had to continue reducing the amount of insulin Saoirse received and although she was not in remission her numbers improved so drastically that I had to stop giving her Caninsulin on safety grounds a week and a half later.

We did have one scare during the transition. The vet advised me to hold the 3 unit dose when I wanted to reduce it. Saoirse had her one and only (thankfully fairly mild) symptomatic hypo that night (caught with home testing and managed successfully at home with help from FDMB). If I had the time again, I would have reduced the dose a little before even starting the transition.

In addition to being better for blood sugar levels, the wet, low carb diet is better overall for a cat's health. I could not get over the improvement in Saoirse's coat: it became really glossy and silky-soft. I changed my civvie (non-diabetic cat) over to the same diet. Not only did her condition improve, she's actually a happier cat.


Mogs
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Ok, thank you. How do you think I should bring this up with my vet? I don't want to sound super critical or like a know it all, but I really do want what's best for my Pitch...
 
I was told that Hills m/d would be great for my cat (who is NOT on insulin) and when I brought up the high carbs factor, she mistakenly told me that even though the food is high in carbs,
that they are "non digestible", meaning it should not affect blood sugar. WRONNNGG! Within 24 hours of starting her on the hills m/d (dry & wet) her gluc. went up over 100 points.
Within a day and a half or so of stopping the hills and back to 9 lives pate, it dropped over 100 points. That food is NOT good for the cats (at least it was not good for my cat) On my next visit soon I plan to bring a print out of the info showing the sharp increase in blood glucose, not to be "right" but so that other cats and people don't have to go through this. No one can argue with solid facts. Good luck! :)
 
smiley747 said:
No one can argue with solid facts.
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Indeed.

Arianna, if it would help you you're very welcome to email your vet a link to Saoirse's 2014 spreadsheet so that you've got some evidence of what a change from Hill's w/d to Purina DM Canned and then Bozita low carb food looks like in real terms. The fourth tab on the sheet has US blood glucose values and the tests were carried out using a veterinary glucometer (Alphatrak 2 - less to argue about!). The food transition started on 10 July 2014 (see Remarks column for food notes.)



Mogs
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I transitioned CJ from high carb dry food to low carb canned food in a week before giving insulin. During the transition (when she was still on both high carb and low carb food), her BG #'s went down over 150 points at the vet (that was before I learned how to home test). And she soon went into remission. The low carb canned food diet works. It's just as important as giving insulin.
 
I'm still pretty new here, so there's a lot I still have to learn. But all the advice you are getting about changing to low carb foods is absolutely on the money. I have gone this route with my kitty, myself, just recently. We transitioned slowly from a primarily dry diet, with a little canned mixed in, to an almost all canned, low carb diet. The change in his BG was nothing short of amazing, he had been on 7 units BID and is now on 1 unit BID, and may be looking at a further reduction. Just please do not start the changeover until you are home testing, and do it slowly!!! I can't stress this enough! Even with a slow transition and close home monitoring, my kitty still had two scary hypo episodes (apparently he is nonsymptomatic, he does not exhibit any of the usual signs, so if I had not been testing him regularly we could very well have had a tragic outcome). BG can drop hard and fast, believe me. But as long as you home test and take your time, it is by far the better diet. You will be surprised at how fast your kitty's numbers will start to go down, and how much healthier you kitty will look and seem. :)

As for the vet's take on it....well, let's just say my vet now has a new name and address.
EDIT: I don't want that to be misleading; my vet and I had bumped heads on other issues, as well, I didn't change practices just over the food issue!

Good luck and keep us posted on how things are going! :)

(You also should check out @BJM's Signature Notes, they are very helpful!)
 
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Squalliesmom said:
Even with a slow transition and close home monitoring, my kitty still had two scary hypo episodes (apparently he is nonsymtomatic, he does not exhibit any of the usual signs, so if I had not been testing him regularly we could very well have had a tragic outcome
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CJ showed no signs when she went hypo, either. The day I learned to home test was the day I learned she was hypo. Home testing is a must and saves needless time and money plus stress and artificially high BG values at the vet. With wonderful guidance from members here, I got CJ out of a hypo episode, saved us both a trip to the vet/er, and saved a ton of money.
 
When I changed Spitzer from dry food to canned, I wound up spending most of the night testing and giving him Karo syrup to keep his glucose level safe ... and i have a sleep disorder which made that pretty agonizing.
Anecdotal reports here have identified that the glucose may drop from 100-200 mg/dL (in one case, 300 mg/dL) and the insulin dose may drop by as much as 2 units when changing from high carb food to low carb canned food.

And 4 units for a glucose of 215 seems unusually high of a dose to me. What insulin?
 
One way to handle the food issue would be to just say he really isn't liking it and you've decided to try some other foods but then say "I'll get back to you if it doesn't work out"...mentioning the cost is another way to bring up that you just want to try some other foods.

If he still tries to pressure you to buy "his" food, just say "I'll think about it, but right now I can't afford it and he won't eat it. If my other attempts to find a food that'll work for him don't pan out, I'll call you and we can discuss this again".....something like that

Good luck with your vetty visit!!
 
Chris & China said:
One way to handle the food issue would be to just say he really isn't liking it and you've decided to try some other foods but then say "I'll get back to you if it doesn't work out"...mentioning the cost is another way to bring up that you just want to try some other foods.

If he still tries to pressure you to buy "his" food, just say "I'll think about it, but right now I can't afford it and he won't eat it. If my other attempts to find a food that'll work for him don't pan out, I'll call you and we can discuss this again".....something like that
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Good idea!!
 
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