The Food Allergy Connection

-Alfred Plechner, DVM

This problem has to do with food allergies and abnormal activity of antibodies in the mucous membrane of the intestinal tract, a result of imbalances in the endocrine-immune systems (see Plechner’s discussion on this problem in the food allergy section and in chapter 15).

FOOD ALLERGIES

See also Digestive Disorders

A healthy animal may not have trouble eating most foods. However, if you feed the same food daily for years, there is potential for intolerances to develop-particularly if the diet consists of a cheap commercial pet food containing multiple ingredients of poor quality.

Typical reactions involve vomiting, diarrhea, and scratching. Food allergies may also manifest as poor absorption of nutrients. Each animal is individual. There are many potential reactions. Two hypersensitive cats may react differently to the same food depending on their individual weaknesses and strengths.

Any animal can become allergic to any food-a protein source, a fruit, a vegetable. Just a small amount of an offending food could be enough to trigger reactions in some animals. In others, reactions occur from constantly feeding the same food.

Experts say that food allergies are less a problem among cats than dogs. The incidence is estimated at between 5 and 15 percent of cats.

Foods “High In Trouble”-“The HIT List-Alfred Plechner, DVM

(Note: Food allergy expert Alfred Plechner, DVM, was a co-creator of the first lamb and rice diet, marketed as Nature’s Recipe, and also helped design the company’s line of special diets for food-sensitive animals.)

Based on years of treating animals for food allergy-related disorders, I created an allergic HIT list of major food offenders. These are the foods that set off the alarm most frequently that is, cause the most trouble in sensitive animals. You may have a cat that is sensitive to any one or several of them.

The HIT list below may shock you. You may be thinking, there is nothing left to feed my sensitive animal. Let me console you-there are plenty of foods you can prepare.

THE “HIT LIST”

1. Beef and beef by-products.

2. Milk. In my experience, perhaps up to 80 percent of animals, no matter what age, cannot tolerate cow’s milk. After drinking it, they usually have gassy stomachs, vomiting, loose stool, or diarrhea. Raw, low fat, or nonfat-it doesn’t matter. However, there is a much greater tolerance to cottage cheese, other cheeses, and yogurt.

3. Yeast, yeast-containing foods, brewer’s yeast (as given to animals for supposed flea protection. Unfortunately, I do see quite a few animals sensitive to yeast).

4. Corn and corn oil.

5. Pork.

6. Turkey.

7. Eggs. Yes, they can be allergenic, particularly the whites. Years ago, egg embryos were used in preparing distemper vaccines for dogs, but they were dropped from the formulations when it was found that they caused allergic reactions in many animals.

8. Fish and fish oils. If you want to provide omega-3 fatty acids to your animal, use plant oils instead, such as flaxseed oil.

9. Wheat and wheat by-products (when in combination with other allergens).

10. Soybeans. This used to be a fine source of protein, but now many animals can’t handle it. Tofu, the fermented soybean product, is less allergenic, but nevertheless some animals are sensitive to it.

11. Chicken.

In order to help affected animals who seemingly have fewer food options open to them, I worked with Nature’s Recipe eight years ago to develop what are called “limited antigen diets.” The idea was to combine potatoes with protein sources that animals had little exposure to and that were thus less likely to cause problems.

Testing validated the concept, leading to the production of a number of dry and canned foods for dogs and cats called Innovative Veterinary Diets. Each item has just two ingredients-one source of protein and one source of carbohydrate-so as to limit the potential for allergic reaction. Such foods include lamb, duck, rabbit, or venison along with potatoes. We have found that animals tend to be less allergic to white potatoes than even rice.

The recommendation is to use a particular food for four to six months and then switch to another. For example, you feed duck and potatoes for four months, then switch to rabbit and potatoes. These foods are widely available on a prescription basis from veterinarians for animals with food disorders. For additional vitamins, minerals, and enzymes, I recommend adding fresh vegetables and fruits to the base food and a good nutritional supplement. The supplement I recommend is Power For Life, made by Terra Oceana (805-563-2634). It contains a health-boosting range of vitamins, trace minerals, enzymes, and whole-food factors. Follow label instructions.

When a cat develops signs of intolerance to foods, the problem may be linked to an endocrine-immune dysfunction, a genetic fall-out from years of inbreeding and line breeding. Among other things, this can create an erratic metabolism and intolerance to many foods. When certain hormones go awry, they fail to properly regulate the immune system. In the digestive tract, uncontrolled immune cells challenge food components as foreign invaders, setting off a whole scenario of upset, intolerance, and malabsorption, resulting in animals not being able to extract adequate nutrition from the food.

As genetic defects become perpetuated in the gene pool of breeding stock, it appears that more and more animals are able to tolerate fewer and fewer foods. With some severely affected animals, unless you correct their deep-seated hormone-antibody levels with replacement therapy, there is hardly anything left they can eat. This may sound overly dramatic, but the reality in my practice is that I see more pets in this sad shape now than before-and I have been studying this problem for many years. The situation has become worse, and many animals are dying early in life because of it. In my opinion we have entered into a genetic ice age (in chapter 15, Plechner describes a blood test that can determine such imbalances and what can be done to correct them).

TIPS FOR FEEDING SAFER FOODS

If you have a food-intolerant animal, the following suggestions can help minimize problems:

* Always read the ingredient label. The shorter the list, the better. The longer the list, the greater the chance of encountering an offending ingredient. Keep in mind that the first three ingredients on the label usually make up 90 percent of the contents.

* Try to avoid the ingredients on the HIT list, foods that often cause reactions in susceptible animals.

* Look out for, and avoid, products with chemical additives. This means the artificial colors, artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and stabilizers. All have the potential to intensify or wholly activate an allergic reaction.

* Fresh and wholesome foods are, of course, much better for your animal, as they are for us. But they, too, have the potential to cause reactions because of hormonal-immune imbalances. This includes raw meat. The food may be great, but your animal just may not be able to tolerate it.

THE ADD-BACK PLAN

If you know or feel that your cat has an intolerance problem, but you don’t know what the particular offending food or foods are, try the following strategy:

* For one week, feed lamb meat or baby food containing pure lamb meat. Cats tolerate lamb quite well. For this test or long-term for a sensitive animal, you can use any of the Innovative Veterinary Diet products available through veterinarians.

* If the stools are good, and there are no signs of food intolerance such as itching, scratching, stomach upset, diarrhea, do a slow add-back of foods, one at a time, and each for a week before you add a new food. You might want to try home-prepared chicken the second week, then a white fish or tuna (for human consumption) in spring water.

* Again, if there are no problems, you can begin to test commercial canned pet foods. Test one a week. Give each food you try a seven-day trial. As foods pass the test, you will begin to build up a “safe list” of items that can be fed.

* Continue to add back any food to the regular diet after it has passed the test. You can then rotate, mix, and ad-lib within the boundaries of tolerated food. In this way, you will soon develop an individualized hypoallergenic menu for your animal.

* Include raw vegetables such as carrots and celery, if your cat will eat them.

* If you choose to add a commercial kibble, be alert for reactions. Remember that many commercial foods have multiple ingredients of poor quality, along with chemical additives, that increase the potential for trouble. Select a quality product, such as one of the better “natural” brands available in health food stores or pet nutrition centers. Look for products with as short a list of ingredients as possible.

* Eliminate any nutritional supplements and snacks when you are testing. In this plan, all foods and even ingredients in nutritional supplements are guilty until proven innocent. Later, once you have a firm handle on a problem-free diet, you can slowly begin to reintroduce supplements. But monitor them as you would the food.

* For variety, it’s okay to share what you eat with your cat-if your cat will eat it. Any kind of meat, unseasoned pastas, vegetables, and salad can be added to the base diet. But if your animal starts to scratch, vomits or has diarrhea, or becomes lethargic, then the light bulb should go on. You may have fed something that your animal cannot tolerate. So be watchful and use common sense if you have a sensitive animal.

{citation: pp. 170-174}

Butter Relief-Alfred Plechner, DVM

A simple remedy to try at the outset of a hairball problem is to put a tad of butter on the roof of the cat’s mouth or somewhere on the body where the animal will lick it off. You can also add a very small bit of flax oil in the food. The idea is to provide extra lubrication to carry the hair through and out the other end.

{citation: p. 178}

The Hormonal Connection-Alfred Plechner, DVM

I treat many sick cats that have outright symptoms of FeLV, FIP, and FIV. I use a combination of approaches that includes a multivitamin/mineral supplement, digestive enzymes, and hormonal replacement. The results are excellent. Seventy percent ofthem with FIV and FIP will live and be normally healthy. For FeLV, the results are even better,, about 85 percent.

It is critical that these animals eat food that is not offensive to them (see Plechner’s comment in food allergy section). If you give them food that they are individually allergic to, you run a high risk of triggering autoimmune turmoil in their bodies, in my experience I have found these animals are often hormonally deficient. They have genetically flawed and imbalanced hormones that generate wild immune responses. Their white blood cells chase down and kill the viruses, then stampede out of control and kill the cat.

Often chemotherapeutic agents are used to treat these conditions. Chemo ravages the immune system. Then you have two major systems-the hormonal and the immune-that are ravaged, imagine what happens to the cat.

For all these cases I use a special blood test available to veterinarians (see chapter 15 on when nothing seems to work) that measures key hormonal and immune activity. The test enables me to calibrate a proper hormonal replacement therapy that goes along with good nutrition and supplements to restore these cats to health. In catteries or multicat households, if any animals test positive for any of these infections, I highly recommend having the animals tested. If the results are normal, I find that cats tend not to develop symptoms. I f results are not normal, your veterinarian can help prevent an outbreak by correcting the existing imbalance with the proper hormonal replacement.

With hormonal and immune imbalances, animals tend to be intolerant to many foods and develop a secondary set of food allergy-related symptoms. Supplementation with digestive enzymes provides an essential therapeutic benefit for these animals. The enzymes aid in breaking down and utilizing food.

{citation: pp. 195-196}

Enzyme Plus Trace Minerals-Alfred Plechner, DVM

For combating skin problems, a plant-based digestive enzyme supplement for pets is very beneficial. Add it directly into the food. The enzymes improve nutritional absorption. Older or sickly cats are very often deficient in digestive enzymes. Supplementation benefits the entire system, including the skin.

I also recommend a good nutritional supplement with trace minerals because the soil we grow our food in is often deficient in minerals. Minerals are the building materials of strong bones, tissue, teeth, nails, and hair coat. Along with the major minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, and zinc, there are dozens of other lesser-known elements-needed in tiny, trace amounts-that are important for health. Mineral deficiencies are involved in many common disorders. I reached this conclusion through the simple step of supplementing the diets of animals with natural products containing seventy or so different minerals. Supplementation with minerals is highly beneficial. Within a six-month period I usually see the following results:

o Improvement in general health.

o Darker, thicker hair coat with increased luster.

o Reduced scratching.

o Reduced flakiness.

o Better maintenance of body weight with reduced caloric intake.

o In geriatric cats, increased activity and improved condition of hair coat.

o Animals plagued by fleas appear to be less attractive to insects. You can see that effect usually within a few weeks.

Many of my clients supplement enzymes and trace minerals for both healing and general prevention. I recommend a palatable product called Power For Life, made by Terra Oceana (805-563-2634), which contains an effective array of enzymes, nutrients, and trace minerals. When dealing with a skin problem, use the enzymes and minerals therapeutically for seven days straight and check for progress. If you don’t see improvement by that time, continue the supplements but slowly switch your animal to a simple diet of lamb or chicken or any of the hypoallergenic Innovative Veterinary Diet products available through veterinarians.

If you start seeing improvement, start adding back individual foods, a single food a week at a time (see Plechner’s add-back plan in the food allergy section). If that approach doesn’t work, you probably need to look at imbalances in the animal’s hormonal system (see chapter 15 on what to do when nothing works).

Over the years dry, itchy, scaly skin has often been treated with fatty acid supplements. Fatty acids can indeed help the quality of the skin and hair coat if there is a deficiency, which is, in fact, fairly common. However, food allergies, deficiencies in digestive enzymes, and imbalances in hormones can also often create this same unhealthy skin condition. And if there is an enzyme deficiency or imbalance, the fatty acids may not become absorbed and reach the skin. Instead they bind with minerals and fat-soluble vitamins and go out with the stool.

{citation: pp. 241-242}