Diet change

My Bones was diagnosed Friday with diabetes. Has anyone tried changing diet before doing insulin? He has been free feeding dry food. We are switching to friskies pate canned good on a schedule. Is it possible that diet alone could be enough?

 

Yes, as long as there's no ketones in the picture, it's actually safer to go ahead and do the diet change first before starting insulin.

Getting off high carb kibble can drastically reduce the need for insulin...and we've had several cats that only needed a diet change....but most of the time, at least a short term of insulin is necessary.

 

I'm not sure if there was ketones the vet had called with the results right before closing Friday. She said his blood glucose was 400 and there was glucose in his urine but everything else came back fine.

 

Welcome!!

Are you planing on home testing, I strongly recommend you do that can literally save his life and if he's not getting insulin yet is also the best time to start practicing the testing

 

Yes I already ordered a glucose monitor its suponsed to be delivered tomorrow. I did the alpha track the vet recommended but I've been hearing alot of people use human testers. Do they both read the same?

 

No...human meters read lower, but at low numbers, they're pretty close. The "time to act" with a human meter is when they drop below 50.....on a pet meter, it's 68

As the numbers get higher, they will get further apart, but it really doesn't matter if the BG is 300 or 400....too high is too high on either meter!

The reason most of us use human meters is two-fold.....One, the cost of replacement strips is a lot more affordable for human meters. The strips for the AT can cost about $1 EACH. Also, our protocols were all developed using human meters, so we're very comfortable in using the numbers we get from them.

All meters are allowed to have up to a 20% variance compared to the number you'd get on "professional lab equipment", so we look for "trends" more than individual numbers.....is the current dose getting them where we want them? Are they heading in a good direction or not?....those are the kinds of questions that ANY meter can tell you.

 

Good to know cause I was looking into the strips couldn't believe the price.