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Do dogs get type 2 (insulin-resistant) diabetes?
Member Forum >> Beyond the Boundaries >> Do dogs get type 2 (insulin-resistant) diabetes?

Blue Eagle Join Date: 2/16/2023 Posts Contributed: 328 Total Likes: 24 Recommends Recd: 0 Ignores Issued: 0 Certs & Awards: 0   Likes Recd: 0

Posted: 3/21/2023 11:52:16 AM Edited: 3/21/2023 12:53:33 PM (1)   Well, I guess it depends who you ask. According to most veterinarians insulin-resistant diabetes does not exist in dogs. I posted this question recently on a FB group where veterinarians answer health questions posted by pet owners for free to help them out.  So admittedly I was lucky that my question there was admitted by an admin. The answer was nevertheless surprising to me. When asking more directly if insulin-resistance exists in dogs, regardless of whether it progresses to type 2 diabetes or whether it is called type 2 diabetes, I was told that all diabetes in dogs is type 1 and insulin resistance is rare. This directly contradicts my personal experience of several dozen dogs in which I have reversed obesity using a  very low-carb, grain-and legume-free diet while doing Beagle rescue. Beagles are a breed that are metabolically pre-disposed to obesity due to the fact that they are bred for endurance, running many miles each day to hunt rabbits without eating in between. They are also the most common breed to be used in research to benefit both dog and human health because of their small size and easy-going temperament. So there is actually a lot of research data on them. The % of overweight and obese dogs is about the same as that of humans in America and it coincides with a similar increase in the last 50 years of highly processed carbohydrate-based foods (most often kibble), that we see in human food. In fact this pet food is made/owned by the same big companies that are also manufacturing highly processed fake foods for humans, and, you guessed it, is sitting just one isle over in the grocery store from hamburger helper, no refrigeration required and shelf life over a year. I decided to revisit the issue of glucose metabolism in dogs recently because one of my own dogs, a racing-bred Whippet, started to get a little chubby around her middle last summer. She is 12 years old and had been somewhat less active, showing only rare interest in sprinting at her usual 35mph speeds which burns through a lot of glucose from high-carb foods fast. I was not terribly concerned but had some blood work drawn. Her fasting glucose was 106mg/dL, well within the "reference range", which is about the same as in humans, 80-120mg/dL. At the same time some of her kidney and liver values were in the upper half of the reference range. Because of her age and lower activity levels I decided to put her on a ketogenic diet and then we had blood drawn again only 3 days later. Her fasting BG dropped to the mid 80’s. Sadly I could not convince my vet to get a fasting insulin. I was told this is not "something we do in dogs" unless there is an insulinoma suspected. In fact, there is not even a reference range for fasting insulin in dogs. Along with this most veterinarians still insist that dogs need carbohydrates in their diet "because the brain needs carbs for energy". The notion that feeding whole raw prey (including skin, bones, connective tissue) is largely frowned upon. Even my suggestion of cooking a whole chicken in the crockpot until the bones disintegrate into mush after about 24 hours was deemed too dangerous by a dog nutrition group. Dogs that show kidney or liver disease are put on prescription diets that are still full of carbs. Even the prescription diet for canine cognitive dysfunction (the canine version of dementia/Alzheimer’s) still has a lot of carbs in it. The reason all this frustrates me so much is because we now know better. Millions of people have seen the benefits of low-carb diets in people and acknowledge their benefit. Do we not owe it to man’s best friend to at least explore the use of blood tests for fasting blood glucose and fasting insulin? Is there any legitimate reason to dissuade pet owners from using inexpensive glucose meters from big box stores for their pet because they are "not very accurate" while making glucose meters for pets expensive and difficult to find? If there are any veterinarians on here please feel free to correct me if I am missing something here. But I see all the signs in dogs I see in people as they become more and more insulin-resistant/pre-diabetic. If dogs are only diagnosed once they have signs of advanced diabetes (which are considered early signs) like glucose in the urine, elevated kidney and liver values, obesity and fasting blood glucose over 180 or even heart disease, cataracts, diabetic neuropathy or even keto-acidosis then they have indeed less of a chance of recovering from the destruction of their pancreas, in particular not with relatively high-carb prescription diets that are still far from being species-appropriate. In fact on casual examination they may very well be assumed to have type 1 diabetes, treatable only with insulin and almost impossible to manage with tight blood sugar control given the still not common (off-label) use of CGM’s for dogs. I am hoping that looking into this further will not only help dogs but people as well.  Dogs are omnivores like humans. They live closer to us than any other species. Learning what works for them very often correlates well with what works for us, both as it relates to nutrition, exercise and other aspects of preventative medicine. Tags:

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