Diet-only Hypo?

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benjamincburns

Member Since 2013
We started at 422 mg/dl (in home) around three weeks ago, and by changing from an Iams dry food diet to Fancy Feast, then to the vet-recommended Purina D/M (wet, pate variety, 1/2 can every 12h), we've so far been successful at avoiding insulin. Over the past week she's been doing great, all of her spot checks (tested on OneTouch UltraSmart) have been below 150 mg/dl with a general downward trend.

Then this evening she seemed a bit more anxious/irritable than usual. When I lanced her ear my wife noticed she was briefly shaky, and when we set her down she was laying down in between bouts of her meowing. By my reading (but I have no experience of my own to go on) this could've been just normal irritable hungry cat behavior, or it could've been mild hypo symptoms. Her reading came out to 53mg/dl, and 3 hours post feeding (when she peaks according to our testing/BGC), she was at 96mg/dl.

The latter seems excellent, but the prior is a bit concerning to me given the shakiness...

So what gives? Should we worry about hypoglycemia when she's apparently becoming controlled under a diet-only regimen? Should we expect this to stabilize, or is it possible that the diet we've got her on is a bit too extreme?

Thanks in advance for any advice!
 
As long as kitty is not getting insulin, she should not be going hypo. I tested my non diabetic cat a little while ago, he was 55, a nice normal number.

By the way, you don't have to use the vet suggested D/M food. It's not the greatest quality food and often kitties will tire of the taste. There is an excellent website on feline nutrition http://www.catinfo.org and on it is a list of most of the canned foods and their carb %. Look for something under 10%. The Fancy Feast pates are commonly used here.
 
Thanks for the response. We're starting off on the D/M wet for now because we trust our Vet's recommendation and because we're seeing excellent results. Over time I'm sure we'll transition to making our own food, as we really don't like not knowing what she's actually eating. I say "over time" because we're planning a move overseas, so for now we're just going to ride it out with the D/M (as long as we have good numbers) and address the longer term solution once we get settled.

But back to the original question, I'm wondering if there's any way in which the mechanism which releases glucose back into the blood fatigues/atrophies from lack of use. So, just like beta cells in the pancreas can kind of revive, I wonder if it's going to take some time for this process to revive as well, or maybe we should just expect to see her in the 50's as her "hungry" number?
 
I know I have seen OTJ kitties here that test in the 40s, and people have also tested non-diabetic cats at levels that low. I'm not sure what the shakes and meowing were all about tonight, but like Wendy said, a hypoglycemic episode absent of a shot of insulin doesn't sound like it should be the cause. My cat, Bob, has been OTJ for a little over two years. I don't test him often any more, but his "normal" fasting BG seems to be in the 60s range. I wish I knew what his "normal" was before he was diagnosed so I'd have something to compare it to.

I also wanted to say that the DM is fine to feed, in my opinion. It doesn't have the worlds greatest ingredients, given the cost per can. But if your kitty will eat it, it's plenty low carb-wise. I'm not sure if this is still the case, but it used to come in just one "flavor" so the biggest problem people seemed to have with it was that their cats would "burn out" on it and all of a sudden not want to eat it any more. Quality wise, I think it's about the same as Fancy Feast or Friskees, but as long as cost is not going to be an issue, and she continues to like eating it, I'd go with what's working for her.
 
Thanks for the info, and for the word of support on D/M. My wife's a sea turtle biologist, and I'm an engineer. Neither of us are strangers to research and I've been reading a ton of stuff on feline nutrition lately. Further, I've had BG issues of my own, so I'm fairly well versed on the basics of diabetes.

I fear succumbing to confirmation bias. That is, my general hypotheses align well with what's written on CatInfo.org (minus the raw part, but that's another whole ball of string), but I'd like to see a range of sources, including scholarly ones, and ultimately I'd like to have some experience of my own to fall back on. Given that D/M is the first thing that's given us good results, including one of the better Fancy Feast varieties per Binky's page, I'm inclined to stick with it while my wife and I do our due diligence.

Pet food companies aren't exactly known for honesty or consistent manufacturing process. Further, I really don't like opening a can of nebulous meaty goo and hoping that it's made of the right stuff. It wouldn't bother me as much if she was otherwise healthy, but now that I have something to measure the engineer in me is going to town. Ultimately the only way I'll feel good about what we're feeding her is if we're making it ourselves.

Also, huge shout-out to our vet, too. She's been excellent. I feel like we're incredibly lucky given some of the vet horror stories I've read here... Although here's hoping we didn't burn up all our luck on her, as our move involves ~30h of travel time and a 10 day quarantine. Scary for everyone involved.
 
Oh yeah, regarding the D/M varieties there's the "savory selects" kind now, but I read through the ingredients list and didn't like some of what I saw, including corn starch. So far our kitty hasn't really had a problem with it, though it's obvious that she very much prefers the Fancy Feast Medleys Shredded Turkey w/ Garden Greens.
 
Unless there is some other medical issue, such as a very rare insulinoma, it is unlikely for a cat to hypo without being on insulin.

Also, Binky's page food charts are a bit outdated; the chart at Cat Info is from 2012.
 
My wife's a sea turtle biologist,
Click to expand...
Any specific species? I only ask because I do a good bit of volunteer work with our local Loggerhead population. We have had 125 nests here this year.
 
The bottom line regarding food:

ideally you want to feed low carb wet food - less than 10%, canned, raw, prescription or not - really is up to you , there is no right or wrong. What you don't want to do is feed dry kibbles, high carb foods.

If the prescription food works for you, great. If he decides he no longer likes it, well then you will need to find something else.

So where are you moving - so your wife can work with turtles?
 
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