Hi,
Hopefully this won't be a controversial post - I'm writing it just in case someone else struggles/will struggle with what I have and I hope it could help them.
My cat has diabetes and has never been successfully regulated on either Prozinc, Lantus, or Levemir. I fed her a low-carb wet food (Nature's Variety Instinct, Evo 95%, etc.) for the past year, but no amount of insulin helped her (I got up to about 6 units with Lantus and it wasn't any more effective than .25 units). This went on for a year and it was horrible. My vet kept recommending Hill's W/D and I resisted because I believe very much that cats shouldn't be eating the crap they put in those foods. Finally I succumbed though because in addition to the diabetes she had ongoing intestinal upset that was getting pretty serious (she had an infection - clostridium - that the vet was slow to diagnose, and by the time he did she was in bad shape intestinally). At some point she was so dehydrated that I had to start giving her 150 ml sub-q fluids twice a day.
I thought she was going to die so many times. Thankfully she only had ketones once, and it was barely trace.
The all-meat food just did not agree with her inflamed intestines. I don't understand why. I finally got so desperate that I gave her DRY Hill's W/D recently, which my vet kept recommending. I don't know why, but it helped her. She finally had well-formed stool that was an appropriate color and the gobs of bright red blood lessened until now they're small streaks. Hopefully they'll go away all together soon! I really didn't like using dry food, so I transitioned to mostly W/D wet and things still seem good.
I have to stress that things were really bad before I gave her this food. Obviously low-carb wet food is ideal, and people should stick with it even if it upsets their cat's tummy for a little while. This went on a year though and I'm embarrassed that it took so long for me to try the W/D. What made me switch finally was I thought she was about a week from dying. She wasted away to 6 lbs. (from 11), was lethargic, and her blood sugar started hovering around 500-600 (it used to always be in the 280-370 range). She was being really demented too and I caught her eating her feces out of the litter. She was a mess and insulin wasn't making a dent in her blood sugar.
Now, after about a month on a mix of W/D wet and dry her blood sugar is responding better to the insulin, she seems to be putting on weight, she seems stronger, and feisty again. I hope it lasts...
I'm sure there might be other options for her that would be lower-carb and still full of fiber and whatever else has helped her intestines to start healing, but for right now i'm sticking with this. With her intestines healing, I finally feel like I have a chance to find the right dose and get her blood sugar down!
So in my case it made sense to feed her food that agreed with her intestines, even though it's too much carbs, because as long as her intestines were inflamed and upset her blood sugar spiked high any way (it was so bad I didn't notice a significant rise from when I switched foods!). I'm writing this because if I had come across a similar posting a while back, it might have helped me realize how important it was to feed her what agreed with her intestines, instead of worrying so much about her blood sugar.
Hopefully this won't be a controversial post - I'm writing it just in case someone else struggles/will struggle with what I have and I hope it could help them.
My cat has diabetes and has never been successfully regulated on either Prozinc, Lantus, or Levemir. I fed her a low-carb wet food (Nature's Variety Instinct, Evo 95%, etc.) for the past year, but no amount of insulin helped her (I got up to about 6 units with Lantus and it wasn't any more effective than .25 units). This went on for a year and it was horrible. My vet kept recommending Hill's W/D and I resisted because I believe very much that cats shouldn't be eating the crap they put in those foods. Finally I succumbed though because in addition to the diabetes she had ongoing intestinal upset that was getting pretty serious (she had an infection - clostridium - that the vet was slow to diagnose, and by the time he did she was in bad shape intestinally). At some point she was so dehydrated that I had to start giving her 150 ml sub-q fluids twice a day.
I thought she was going to die so many times. Thankfully she only had ketones once, and it was barely trace.
The all-meat food just did not agree with her inflamed intestines. I don't understand why. I finally got so desperate that I gave her DRY Hill's W/D recently, which my vet kept recommending. I don't know why, but it helped her. She finally had well-formed stool that was an appropriate color and the gobs of bright red blood lessened until now they're small streaks. Hopefully they'll go away all together soon! I really didn't like using dry food, so I transitioned to mostly W/D wet and things still seem good.
I have to stress that things were really bad before I gave her this food. Obviously low-carb wet food is ideal, and people should stick with it even if it upsets their cat's tummy for a little while. This went on a year though and I'm embarrassed that it took so long for me to try the W/D. What made me switch finally was I thought she was about a week from dying. She wasted away to 6 lbs. (from 11), was lethargic, and her blood sugar started hovering around 500-600 (it used to always be in the 280-370 range). She was being really demented too and I caught her eating her feces out of the litter. She was a mess and insulin wasn't making a dent in her blood sugar.
Now, after about a month on a mix of W/D wet and dry her blood sugar is responding better to the insulin, she seems to be putting on weight, she seems stronger, and feisty again. I hope it lasts...
I'm sure there might be other options for her that would be lower-carb and still full of fiber and whatever else has helped her intestines to start healing, but for right now i'm sticking with this. With her intestines healing, I finally feel like I have a chance to find the right dose and get her blood sugar down!
So in my case it made sense to feed her food that agreed with her intestines, even though it's too much carbs, because as long as her intestines were inflamed and upset her blood sugar spiked high any way (it was so bad I didn't notice a significant rise from when I switched foods!). I'm writing this because if I had come across a similar posting a while back, it might have helped me realize how important it was to feed her what agreed with her intestines, instead of worrying so much about her blood sugar.
