Cat Self Regulating by Eating?

Tomlin

Tomlin

Member Since 2019
Has anyone noticed a pattern of your cat wanting to eat &/or eating more with onset of the insulin &/or doing the same at possibly their nadir? We first noticed what seemed like our T managing his own drops when he was on the Vetsulin & now that we are a little bit further into the Lantus, we are starting to notice some similar patterns. Obviously I would need to catch him & get the BG before he eats, but we are pretty sure he's responding to something because his eating patterns are different on the insulin than they were before. He did not have any clinical symptoms when diagnosed despite a fructosamine of 500+. Eating, drinking, urine all same old same old. Just curious if anyone else ever noticed something similar?
 
Makes sense! I assume then that one would expect a jump in the #s then. Just trying to find the onset & nadir so that I don't make the mistake of thinking his BG is too high when its high because he ate.
 
I looked at it as...it is his regular eating pattern...so the numbers will reflect what is going on. Because of his disease, not feeding him was not going to work, so I just let him eat when he wanted. With Jones there was not a lot of carb sensitivity as his FD was due to the prednisolone. That worked in my favour.
 
It won't work for my guy either! We don't have a carb issue & we aren't sure how the prednisone factored or isn't factoring in. I had thoughts of attempting to reduce his dose again very slightly, but sure enough he started to have a flare over the weekend so we are staying put with the dose. One thing we do know is that the dose reduction taken in the beginning did nothing to his #s, so it just may be damage to the pancreas that resulted in him developing DM.
 
I found Jones' very sensitive to the reduction in pred. Within 3-4 days I was dropping his insulin dose. You can see in the beginning, once I started getting serious with home testing, that his dose went down to a whisper dose when he was on 1/4 tab. When he went back up to a whole tab at a time his dose went up accordingly.
 
Its interesting how they are all so different. I guess the one positive with not seeing a change is I don't feel as bad about him remaining on the dose he's on. If he had some significant response like Jones it would be different. After seeing T start to have issues on Friday, I became less focused on trying to reduce it any further. If something changes in the future, I may try, but the vet has also reminded me that T may also have Addison's so he will need that Pred
 
For Jones, the pred as bad as the affects were, gave him more quality time with us. So I treated it as a necessary evil and just worked the insulin to match.

I only adjusted the dose based upon vet advice and in the end, due to the pancreatitis getting worse it was like he needed insulin anyway.


Yes, each cat is different!!
 
Quality is definitely what my focus is! Years ago we were on a lower dose & I consulted with Cornell. They said the Prednisolone isn't as much of an issue as injected steroids & that pancreatitis is extremely painful, so get him to a dose where he is not in pain. We did that & he has been happy & living a normal life ever since. Even now, his DM just showed up in lab work, no symptoms, which really surprised the vet & us. In fact, when the vet called me about the elevated glucose he was thinking stress, maybe we tweak the pred slightly but not concerned until the fructosamine came back & it was clear that he was diabetic.
 
( avoid using prednisone/prednisolone in a patient with existing diabetes )
https://veterinarypartner.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=19239&id=4951498

There are other things you can try for inflammation (Pancreatitis ) My cat has Diabetes, Kidney disease & High Blood pressure. (A year ago he had an attack of Pancreatitis ) I give him 3-4 drops of a good quality CBD Oil every day & he's doing fine. The only med he gets is a 1/4 piece of Blood pressure tab.

Every medical web site I looked at said Pred. can affect bg when an animal (or Person) has diabetes.
 
JoyBee&Ravan said:
( avoid using prednisone/prednisolone in a patient with existing diabetes )
https://veterinarypartner.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=19239&id=4951498

There are other things you can try for inflammation (Pancreatitis ) My cat has Diabetes, Kidney disease & High Blood pressure. (A year ago he had an attack of Pancreatitis ) I give him 3-4 drops of a good quality CBD Oil every day & he's doing fine. The only med he gets is a 1/4 piece of Blood pressure tab.

Every medical web site I looked at said Pred. can affect bg when an animal (or Person) has diabetes.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the thoughts. Prednisolone doesn't actually always affect every cats BG in a significant way & Prednisolone carries even less of a risk than prednisone. It definitely depends on the cat & it is more typically an issue with stronger steroid hormones, like injections being one example. So, in cases like mine Prednisolone is recommended. This is also a cat with a very long course of chronic pancreatitis with very, very high fPLIs that do not change as well as chronic inflammation of his pancreas as assessed by ultrasound & an endocrinologist. He has never been clinically stable without prednisolone. That makes it different than treating cat who has had an episode or even multiple episodes & was able to be stabilized & then meds discontinued. In addition, he most likely has Addison's disease which requires treatment with Prednisolone. He has been evaluated by a large academic U setting (was actually presented in a grand rounds at the hospital which was cool), also Texas A&M which leads the way with regards to GI research & diagnosis & also Cornell Feline Hospital was in on the treatment recommendations.

I am sharing all of this because it is common for some vets out there to make a recommendation to stop prednisolone without having a thorough understanding &/or experience with more chronic, complicated cases of pancreatitis. This can have serious consequence on the cats health & it may make matters worse vs better. By decreasing a drug that is effectively treating inflammation, you increase inflammation (&usually pain with this illness), both increase BG. More often than not, in cases like mine, the DM is a consequence of damage to the pancreas vs prednisolone & reducing it doesn't change anything. In my case, we tried a slight reduction so not to rock the boat with regard to the pancreatitis & to see if it changed the BG & it didn't. For Tracy & Jones, the drug & dosing effected him. It really is specific to each cat & what is going on.
 
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