Extreme Increase of Diabetes in Cats

February 1 2014 by in Diabetes, Food for animals

According to recent statistics diabetes has become increasingly common in cats in the last ten years. Something is very wrong!

Fat cats risk becoming diabetic, according to more and more observations:

While the exact incidence is unknown, the number of diabetic cats is increasing at an alarming rate due to the tremendous increase in the number of overweight and obese cats.

VCA Animal Hospitals: Diabetes Mellitus in Cats

Cats that eat cheap cat food based on wheat, oats, rice and corn (carbohydrates) – despite being genetically adapted meat eaters – risk becoming fat AND getting diabetes.

Food with a lot of easily digested carbohydrates may namely raise both the cat’s blood sugar and shoot the fat-storing hormone insulin levels through the roof. The cat will become both sick and fat from new industrial foods filled with easily digested carbohydrates. Just like we do.

Your Diabetic Cat

Cats and Carbs: An Update on Feline Diabetes

What does your cat eat?

25 comments

Top comments

M
February 1 2014 9
Our cat was diagnosed with diabetes teo years ago - the vet gave her two months to live. Wecimmediately changed diet to no carbs. She still lives and seems fine. Change was instant.

Replies: #5, #9

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Kjell Granelli
February 1 2014 7
Since about a year we feed our cats this Canadian cat food http://www.orijen.ca/. No grains or starch and only ingredients emulating what cats would find in the wild. There are also variants for dogs. They cost more than your regular supermarket food, but they thrive :-)

Reply: #18

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1
Zepp
February 1 2014
Its strange.. very strange, it seams that cats and humans thrive best on there natural diet!

And for cats its mostly mice!

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/b/2011/10/02/is-the-catkins-diet-best-f...

Mayby they dont adapted to farming?
2
Henk
February 1 2014
I wonder how much impact all the electromagnetic radiation inside have on cats and dogs.
3
Lynne
February 1 2014
It also might have something to do with cats being kept indoors all day and not being able to hunt. Cats eat out of boredom, too.
4
M
February 1 2014 9
Our cat was diagnosed with diabetes teo years ago - the vet gave her two months to live. Wecimmediately changed diet to no carbs. She still lives and seems fine. Change was instant.

Replies: #5, #9
5
Reply to comment #4 by M
Galina L.
February 1 2014 2
Did you remove all sources of electromagnetic radiation and made your cat to spent more time outside?
6
Vick
February 1 2014
I feed my cat with raw meat and noticed that cat always leaves fatty pieces only eat lean
7
Kjell Granelli
February 1 2014 7
Since about a year we feed our cats this Canadian cat food http://www.orijen.ca/. No grains or starch and only ingredients emulating what cats would find in the wild. There are also variants for dogs. They cost more than your regular supermarket food, but they thrive :-)

Reply: #18
8
Wendy
February 1 2014 1
My cat eats a brand called Orijen. After my cat getting reactions to possibly chicken for some reason and then taking him to the vet, and the vet putting him on this "special" vet food made with rice and duck, he started getting fat. I got rid of that and then tried the Blue Buffalo brand which also made him fat, even though it had no grains in it. I finally found the brand Orijen, which worked wonders. He eats the Six Fish brand. 80% protein, all from fatty fish, and 20% carb from all natural sources. They try to add a lot of natural sources in that the "big cats" roaming around would chew on or come across in the wild. If you look at the ingredients on the back, nothing looks too suspicious which is nice. I also know where the meat and fish come from. Western Canada. The meat and fish are raised naturally and apparently roam free and they do business with local farms. Coming from Saskatchewan Canada, that is important to me knowing this company is Canadian, especially Western Canadian. The farms are relatively in Alberta and B.C. I think the company is based in Alberta. I never allowed my cat to develope diabetes. I was always worried about that and took it into my own hands to find food that was as close as possible, besides raw meat, to his natural diet, mainly because of what I learned about low carb. My cat actually lost weight, has more energy, and physically looks clear eyed and shiny! He has also lost the bloating. He has been eating this food for a while now. I know vets mean well, but sometimes you just need to do your own research and look for yourself. Orijen also has dog food as well. You can tell the food is fresh. As soon as you open the bag, the strong smell of fresh fish hits you like a wall! Woo!
9
Reply to comment #4 by M
sten
February 1 2014 1
Your cat's fast recovery makes a lot of sense . My angina started to worsen after 7 years causing me to awake in the middle of the night with awful chest pain apart from having as soon as I walked more than 50 meters too fast. As a last ditch attempt before handing myself into the cardiologist's care I went strict low carb, or strict LCHF. The night pain never returned and after 6 weeks I could walk and do things again I hadn't been able to since before diagnose. Now it is two years ago I recovered from my "incurable" condition....
I am very happy for your cat and all of us that have regained our health from "incurable diseases" through low carb!

Sad for our dogs that got too much carbs and died prematurely from cancer over 10 years ago when we just did not know....

And BTW there is more electromagnetic radiation around here now with wireless networks, mobile phones and masts for them not far away.
Maybe it only affects high carb consumers ?
10
FrankG
February 1 2014
Please keep your cats indoors... some wild bird species numbers are dropping at an alarming rate. This report from Canada shows cats as the leading cause of bird mortality; at an estimated 200 million per year! The next closest cause is at 25 million... cats kill more wild birds than ALL other causes combined...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/9-leading-causes-of-bird-deaths-in-ca...
11
N.
February 1 2014 2
My Norweigian Forest cat is on raw meat. LOVES IT! The first time I gave him some, he ran around our apartment literally kicking up his heels. No more "cookies" or other carb garbage food for our fur-baby. He also eats coconut oil and coconut cream. :-) He is lean and healthy, bright eyes, goregous fur, curious and mentally acute! Opens doors, crawls onto things..fetches his toys and plays all day long. No problems. He is an indoor cat but he is extremely active. He loves watching birds...but only sees them through the window. Why feed carbs to cats, give them diabetes and then start chasing the sugar-dragon and add insulin to the mix? LCHF is the only reasonable thing to do.
12
Wendy
February 1 2014 1
I keep my cat indoors. He's kind of a "scaredy-cat". Haha. He's kind of afraid to go outside. Plus, I hear they live longer indoors. The vet thought he was an outdoor cat because he wasn't fat. Nope, just try to feed him good food. Although my neighbors cat is an outdoor cat and eats mice in our yard, which is helpful! My cat is a dark orange tabby. He's got big chompers so sometimes we call him the Sabertooth Tabby!
13
dufva
February 1 2014 6
Another pet-plague I´ve been wondering about is all dogs running around with bad joints and pelvices

The general opinion is that it´s because of bad breeding, but maybe that´s not all it is

I bet it´s the modern sugardense dogfood that´s the main problem in many of these cases
14
Barbara
February 2 2014 1
We feed our cats a raw food diet using a combo of homemade raw food and bone-in meats that is working very well. I think even the higher quality grain free kibble is too processed to be very healthy for cats. http://www.rawfedcats.org/benefits.htm and http://tcfeline.com/2012/04/27/original-raw-cat-food-recipe/
15
Dryfoodkillscats
February 2 2014
A diet of dry kibble (which is always high-carb) does not only cause obesity and diabetes in cats, but also urethral blockage, kidney disease (dry kibble causes permanent dehydration), endocrine disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, and so on.

Recommended reading: Dr Lisa Pierson's excellent website catinfo.org
Scroll down to the middle of the page and see explicit photographs of a cat suffering from urethral blockage and photographs of an obese cat with horrible eczema caused by his inability to keep himself clean in the perianal region.

There is also information on how to calculate the carb content in canned food. You won't find this information on the labels.

Feeding your cat a biologically appropiate raw diet is not difficult. See Dr Pierson's recipe.
16
Archie Robertson
February 2 2014
We have two cats, litter-brothers, called Sugar and Spice.
Sugar has never been a greedy cat. Spice, on the other hand, has always been a glutton.

We initially fed them both on canned meat and "mixer meal" (usually Friskies). Sugar would eat up his ration of canned meat, then go out for a walk. Spice would eat up all his canned meat, then all his mixer, then all of Sugar's mixer. He'd then go out for a short walk, then return and mew pitifully in the hope of getting some more—so we'd give him more mixer.

After a few years like this, Spice was considerably overweight (8 kg compared to 6 kg for Sugar), and was suffering from arthritis. We stopped the mixer immediately, and he promptly returned to a normal weight, regained his energy, and showed no further signs of arthritis. Spice is also the great hunter, coming back with birds, mice and so on; we don't particularly like it, but that's nature.

They are now 12, and both in excellent health! Thank goodness for low-carb diets for cats!
17
Tammi
February 3 2014
So what is a good cat food that is not outrageously priced? I have a big orange tabby that will be 10 this yr. He goes outside for a little while everyday but spends most of his time inside (he likes to be out more in the summer). He seems to be in good health, but if I can do better for him that would be great.
18
Reply to comment #7 by Kjell Granelli
Daniel Ferreira
February 3 2014
Thanks, Im ordering now, i just notice my dog food had RICE and CANOLA OIL on the ingredients
19
Daci
February 4 2014
I agree with FrankG about keeping your cat indoors. I used to be a wildlife rehabber and the carnage cats do to native just horrific. They don't just kill for food,they kill because they can.
In one bit of research done on cats,some were given dishes of food and a small rodent. One cat walked over to the rodent,killed it and then returned to it's dish to continue eating.
Since birds can't see at night,they are the most helpless of all. Here in America,flying squirrels seldom live longer that a year due to cats. And don't even get me started on what they have done in Australia.
That being said,the same cheap grains put in cat foods are also in food for rabbits,rodents, dogs, hedgehogs and birds...And of course, us.
20
Casey
February 5 2014
Food choices for feline diabetes can be controlled in several ways:

1. Owner awareness and desire to learn and take action
2. Owner willingness and sense of responsibility
3. Owner use of feeding aids, such as the MeowSpace http://meowspace.biz, when faced with the difficulty of feeding multiple pets different foods.
4. Owner determination and consistency

Bottom line: It's the pet owner who has the power to help the feline diabetes remission process, but they have to want to take the steps to do it, and be willing to go those lengths.
21
mike
February 5 2014 3
'They don't just kill for food,they kill because they can'.
This is the anthropomorphic nonsense that is peddled as an excuse to kill foxes. The mantra is perpetuated by a hen coop full of dead chickens and 'I wouldn't mind if they killed just one, but they do it because they just enjoy killing'.

Wrong! That mindset is exclusively reserved for man.

Cats (and foxes) are opportunistic killers who on seeing movement will attack. If they did not, they might miss out on a meal. This is an inbuilt reflex they are unable to control, so given an artificial environment such as a hen coop, they will kill everything that moves.
22
Cathy Clark
February 8 2014 1
I have two cats, and 6 months after I started eating low-carb, I also started my fat cat on a low-carb diet. She's lost about 10% of her body weight and is much happier and healthier - she plays like a kitten again. We're switching both cats to a grain-free diet this month since one seems to have developed allergies to Purina dry food. It makes sense to feed them something akin to what they'd eat in the wild - their bodies are designed to digest meat, not corn.
23
MJ
February 10 2014
Plenty of high quality wet food and grain-free dry food for grazing. We feed this to all the ferals/strays in the neighborhood, as well as our strictly indoor cat. She came home from the shelter with us several months ago, is estimated to be 8-10 years old, and had a big old belly that dragged on the ground (no diabetes, fortunately). Her belly has gotten quite a bit smaller since she came home with us and switched to the grain-free diet, and she's already noticeably more energetic and more agile. :)
24
Eric Westman
February 26 2014
Of course! Cats are supposed to eat the "Cat-kins Diet..."!
25
MJ
February 26 2014
LOL. And meow.

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