JoyBee&Ravan
Member Since 2018
Why Supplementing With Fish Oil/Omega-3s Is so Important
So let's say we have a cat for which we regularly check urine specific gravity, and all is well until kitty turns 9 or 10 and his number dips to, say, 1.025. We take him in for an SDMA test, and the vet determines he's in the beginning stages of renal disease. I asked Dr. Lisa how she would proceed at that point.
"First of all, let's hope the cat has been off of dry food all his life, or at least as soon as his owner learned dry food is not a very healthy diet for a cat," she says. "So let's hope he's on a water-rich diet.
Regarding urine specific gravity: Picture a sieve in your kitchen, and the holes of that sieve are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. When urine specific gravity drops, it means the kidneys are leaking more and more water. They're unable to save water for the body.
There's nothing that frustrates me more than to see cat owners leave their vet's office with a bag of fluids under one arm and a bag of dry food under the other arm. They've been told to feed a water-depleted diet and then stick a needle in their cat's back to put water into him. That's pretty nonsensical
The sensible approach? Step one, provide a water-rich diet. Step two, the diet should be low in phosphorus. Step three, supplement with omega-3 fatty acids— fish oil, fish oil, fish oil. When we do post-mortems on these cats, we see nephritis. 'Neph-' means kidney, '-itis' means inflammation.
We know that fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids, specifically eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) plus docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are anti-inflammatory. There was a meta-data study done that looked back at all the individual CKD studies that were done, and the researchers discovered that cats getting high amounts of fish oil seemed to live the longest.
So let's say we have a cat for which we regularly check urine specific gravity, and all is well until kitty turns 9 or 10 and his number dips to, say, 1.025. We take him in for an SDMA test, and the vet determines he's in the beginning stages of renal disease. I asked Dr. Lisa how she would proceed at that point.
"First of all, let's hope the cat has been off of dry food all his life, or at least as soon as his owner learned dry food is not a very healthy diet for a cat," she says. "So let's hope he's on a water-rich diet.
Regarding urine specific gravity: Picture a sieve in your kitchen, and the holes of that sieve are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. When urine specific gravity drops, it means the kidneys are leaking more and more water. They're unable to save water for the body.
There's nothing that frustrates me more than to see cat owners leave their vet's office with a bag of fluids under one arm and a bag of dry food under the other arm. They've been told to feed a water-depleted diet and then stick a needle in their cat's back to put water into him. That's pretty nonsensical
The sensible approach? Step one, provide a water-rich diet. Step two, the diet should be low in phosphorus. Step three, supplement with omega-3 fatty acids— fish oil, fish oil, fish oil. When we do post-mortems on these cats, we see nephritis. 'Neph-' means kidney, '-itis' means inflammation.
We know that fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids, specifically eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) plus docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are anti-inflammatory. There was a meta-data study done that looked back at all the individual CKD studies that were done, and the researchers discovered that cats getting high amounts of fish oil seemed to live the longest.
