Brit food

Hi everyone. I write from South America and I am happy to find this page. My cat (Tuni) is 14 years old and the vet says she may have diabetes and kidney damage, but she still needs more tests. For now she is confirmed: hyperthyroidism (8.4 ug / dl) and hypertension (180). Her symptoms are that she drinks about 400 cc of water (before 100 cc), then urinates 7-8 times a day. She licks her genital area without a specific pattern. And she does a "lick her lips" type of gesture to her after eating, drinking or randomly (before she only did it prior to throwing up hairballs).

Please, I need help with these questions:

1. The biochemical profile and thyroid exam were done with clotted blood. Does this affect the result?

2. My cat Tuni is very nervous (she just tried to put her in the urine transport bag for fear), could this increase her blood pressure and thyroid hormone?

3. Tuni’s feeding has been cooked chicken, turkey and organ meats…So I feel like we regress if we switch to a commercial diet. Anyway, I would like to know if the brit diabetic food (one of the only options to order) could help Tuni considering all her problems. If I order the cans tomorrow they will arrive in 1 week. Attached the ingredients, analysis and product page. Thank you.

https://britvetdiets.com/diets/30-diabetes

COMPOSITION:
dehydrated chicken (48%), yellow peas (20%), yellow pea protein, chicken fat (4%), potato protein, bamboo lignocellulose (2%), salmon oil (2%), hydrolysed chicken liver (2%), minerals, sodium chloride, psyllium husks and seeds (0.5%), dried algae (0.5%, Ascophyllum nodosum), hydrolysed crustacean shells (a source of glucosamine sulphate, 0.035%), hydrolysed cartilage (a source of chondroitin sulphate, 0.023%), yeast extract (source of mannan-oligosaccharides, 0.018%), β-glucans (0.018%), sea buckthorn (0.015%), fructo-oligosaccharides (0.012%), Mojave yucca (0.012%)

METABOLISABLE ENERGY:
3,740 kcal/kg

ANALYTICAL CONSTITUENTS:
crude protein 46.0 %, fat content 13.0 %, crude fibre 3.0 %, crude ash 7.7 %, moisture 10 %, omega 3 0.55 %, omega 6 1.6 %, calcium 1.3 %, phosphorus 1.0 %, sodium 0.4 %, magnesium 0.07 %, starch 15 %, total sugars 0.8 %



NUTRITIONAL ADDITIVES PER 1 KG:
vitamin A (3a672a) 26,000 I.U., vitamin D3 (E671) 1,000 I.U., vitamin E (3a700) 1,000 mg, vitamin C (3a312) 300 mg, choline chloride (3a890) 2,300 mg, biotin (3a880) 3 mg, vitamin B1 (3a821) 10 mg, vitamin B2 30 mg, niacinamide (3a315) 60 mg, calcium-D-panthothenate (3a841) 60 mg, vitamin B6 (3a831) 35 mg, folic acid (3a316) 15 mg, vitamin B12 0.15 mg, zinc chelate of amino acids hydrate (3b606) 110 mg, ferrous chelate of amino acids hydrate (E1) 55 mg manganese chelate if amino acids hydrate (E5) 35 mg, potassium iodide (3b201) 3 mg, cupric chelate of amino acids hydrate (E4) 3 mg, organic form of Selenium produced by Saccaromyces cerevisiae CNCM I-3060 (selenised yeast inactivated) (3b8.10) 0.2 mg, taurine (3a370) 2,300
mg, L-carnitine (3a910) 600 mg, L-methionine (3c305) 4 000 mg. Gut flora stabilisers per 1 kg: Enterococcus faecium DSM 10663/NCIMB 10415 (4b1707) 1x109 CFU

 

Welcome. Waving from Canada. I'm tagging a member who knows a lot about South American food choices.
She fed raw and also put together this chart of commercial foods.

• MEXICO AND ARGENTINA FOOD CHARTS data complied by Veronica & Babuchiri (Jan 25, 2020)

@Veronica & Babu-chiri

 

Tagging @FrostD and @Gracie85 regarding hyperthyroidism.

It is likely that the excessive drinking is because of the excessive glucose from the diabetes. The drinking helps the body to get rid of the excess glucose. As your cat becomes regulated, the drinking will diminish.

 

Generally, you need a blood sample that is not clotted in order to get accurate values.

The food that you're currently feeding your cat is high in carbohydrates -- approximately 20%. We consider a low carbohydrate food as less than 10% and most people here feed their cats in the 5% range. I'm guessing this is a dry food given how low the moisture content is. Most dry foods, even diabetic dry foods, are high in carbohydrates.

The raw diet you were feeding sounds like it was fine. As long as a raw diet is nutritionally complete, it should be fine for a diabetic cat. This site has a great deal of information on feline nutrition.

 

Oh Tuni eats cooked meats (chicken, turkey and a little heart). She has never tasted raw meat. But I imagine this did not cause the diabetes. So hyperthyroidism could cause diabetes?
Thanks for telling me the amount of carbohydrates in the food, I want to use some moist food to make the meats more attractive, only half a tablespoon in each ration.

 

Thanks. I will be happy to receive any comments or recommendations from the kind people of this forum. On Wednesday I will repeat the blood count and biochemical profile. And I'll take a blood sample to a human lab for fructosamine testing. I will make a post with the results.

 

It doesn't matter if the food is raw or cooked. You need to be sure that your cat is getting a nutritionally complete diet. The site that I linked has a recipe for homemade food -- you can feed raw or cook the food. There are a number of supplements that are needed (e.g., taurine) that are necessary for a cat's health.

Hyperthyroidism isn't a cause for diabetes. Diabetes is the result of the beta cells in the pancreas not producing insulin. Hyperthyroidism can put your cat's metabolism in overdrive but it doesn't cause diabetes.

 

I understand. Tuni's ultrasound showed evidence of chronic pancreatitis. The pancreatic duct measures 1.7 millimeters (the duct should measure up to 1 millimeter) and the body of the pancreas has a thickened wall. For now that supports the diabetes theory. The basal glucose came out normal and on wednesday they will analyze the fructosamine.

 

Hyperthyroidism (HT) can cause everything to go wrong, including increasing blood sugar. When we got our cat's HT under control, and switched him to a very low-carb diet, his blood sugars went back to the normal range and we avoided having to go to insulin for him. It can give the impression kidneys and liver are off, or make them appear fine when they are not, and a bunch of other problems, too. Every system in a cat's body can go haywire as the thyroid goes hyperactive. Stress can increase a cat's blood sugar reading, as we all know from getting higher numbers at the vet's than at home, and an HT cat is in a state of permanent bodily stress.
HT can also make a cat drink a lot, and then also pee a lot. Lambors was spending his day bouncing between the water bowl and the litter box. Makes them very hungry, as they are burning up calories at a much higher rate than normal. Also can make them very restless, especially at night, he'd roam the house howling every night as soon as all the people went to bed, and randomly during the day, too. When we found his HT, his level was up at 14, which is very high. He had always, since a kitten, like playing in the waterbowl, and had always been a piggy about eating, and always been rather vocal, so we didn't realize when he was going HT because it was just many of his normal activities increasing, not like we could see something new. Vet caught it with a thorough blood test work up (sent out) when we realized our big, fat cat wasn't actually so fat anymore.
And don't trust the in-house blood test the vet does right there for his thyroid levels. Very inaccurate, must be sent out to a real lab. Had one vet's in-house machine tell us his level was 2, when in fact it was back up to 13 even with medication. Suspect her machine was not calibrated to handle such a high number and so it gave a totally false reading.
You will want to join the Facebook group called "Hyperthyroid Cats". Best info you will ever find, lots of very knowledgeable and experienced people, very active site so you usually don't have to wait very long for an answer; and lots of good information just reading the posts that are already there.
We had our cat treated with the radioactive I131, so I no longer participate with that group, but if you search in Facebook for "Hyperthyroid Cats" you should easily find it.

 

Thanks
I'm glad your kitty found relief. I will check that page. Did your kitty have any adverse effects after the thyroid treatment?

 

We had him on the transdermal methimazole for about 1-1/2 years, but his level kept rising anyway; it's likely his thyroid tumor (HT is almost always a thyroid tumor, usually benign but sometimes turns malignant) was changing and going malignant as his unmedicated thyroid hormone level had reached 22! So, when we had the I131 done, they gave him a very large dose to make sure they destroyed all of the tumor (or the HT can come back) and he became hypothyroid instead. Sometimes this happens initially, and then levels recover, but he remained well hypo, so now he gets a small pill (levothyroxine, same as humans do, and very inexpensive) twice a day to maintain him at normal levels. Quick and easy, no more problems. It's been three years, we test his blood level about once a year now. Have kept him on a diabetic-type diet (high protein, very low carbs) to make sure we don't end up having to deal with diabetes, so far, so good. Wish we had had the funds to get the I-131 done right away when he was first diagnosed.

 

Thanks. The experience of your feline baby very valuable. So is hyperthyroidism more likely to cause diabetes or diabetes symptoms? It's all very confusing... Tuni had 180 blood pressure with 2 vets. She is very skittish and I'm not sure if those results are reliable. I think I'll get a blood pressure monitor... I'm worried that one vet thinks it's kidney damage and another thinks it's diabetes (because of the ultrasound showing an elongated pancreatic duct). Hopefully with the fructosamine and smda test everything will be clear soon, although as you say hyperthyroidism is deceptive and I read a study that said it can mask the damage in kidney exams

 

It can certainly look like diabetes symptoms, as we had excessive water drinking and peeing, and rapid weight loss, and his blood sugar testing high at the vet's. And it can do things like make it look like there's liver trouble, while masking kidney trouble, or is that the other way around, I forget? An overactive thyroid messes up everything--it's like jamming the accelerator down to the floor while the car is still in park or first gear, or like having a non-stop surge of electricity way above normal level going through your electronics. Everything you examine (test for) could read out wrong, anything could appear to be malfunctioning.
We got him on the thyroid medication AND changed his diet right away, which fixed the blood sugar readings, so I don't know if fixing the thyroid alone did that, or if the diet change was more important, or both (he had been on unlimited dry food, which is high carb, plus a bit of wet food, at the time). Very important to get the thyroid levels down to normal before judging whether kidneys and other organs are working okay.

Read up on the facebook page, Hyperthyroid Cats, and post questions to get the specific answers you need. Best site I've found yet.

Note that many vets are not well-experienced with HT in cats, and will start you off with a high dose of methimazole. This is WRONG. Just like with insulin, it is better to start low and work up to the right level for many reasons: methimazole can be hard on a cat's stomach and digestive system, starting low gives them a chance to adjust to it instead of triggering a bad reaction; there is also transdermal methimazole which can be much easier for some cats to tolerate (we had no problems, tho). If you start with too high a dose of methimazole, it quickly throws the cat into a HYPOthyroid state, which makes them very very sick as well, and bouncing between too high and too low doses is really hard on them, and I've seen people get so distressed by "the medicine" making their cat sick that they stop altogether, which is no good, either, as you really cannot treat HT without it, to name the biggest problems.
If you start treating for diabetes first, with insulin, you will need to be home-testing daily before you start thyroid treatment, as things could well change quickly as the thyroid gets put under control.

I should mention, there is ONE non-medication method that may work, it is a special food that contains NO iodine, which starves the thyroid of the iodine it needs to keep over-functioning. Using this food means that your cat can NEVER, not one bite, have anything else to eat. I believe this works when the HT is not too high, don't know if it works when it gets to higher levels. But the NEVER getting other food (because everything has some small level of natural iodine in it) is a strict rule that cannot be broken.
Any other "treatments," herbs, there are some tonics or mixtures, do not treat HT. They may mask symptoms, for a while. But they are doing nothing to fix your cat's problem or restore it to health, even if at first they make it appear that they are. It is only the appearance, masking the problem, not fixing it.

 

Hi, where in south america are you?

I think everyone has made a lot of very good suggestions, I just wanted to add that as far as I know other than a very very specific diet with no iodine mentioned before, there is no special diet for hyperthyroidism so I guess the best you can do is give him a good diabetic diet (low carb high quality protein) and medicine for his thyroid ( if he in fact does have a thyroid problem) that is you will need to deal with both issues at the same time.

Measuring the blood pressure at the vet can be tricky because of the stress the cat is in so you may need a few more readings to determine if he has some blood pressure issue

Is not that it causes diabetes symptoms but the thing is that some of the symptoms are very similar, that is they drink a lot of water so they need to go to the litter box a lot, and they are very hungry , eat a lot and still lose some weight but the reason in each case is different

Diabetes won't show in an ultrasound, cats with pancreas and pancreatic duct that look perfectly normal in an ultrasound can have diabetes and cats with problems in their pancreas or odd looking pancreas may not have diabetes, the level of glucose in his blood is what is really going to tell you if he is diabetic or not, and yes the fructosamine test will help with the diagnose.

The way of diagnosing thyroid problems is also with blood tests specifically for T4 (thyroxine) and TSH(thyroid stimulating hormone) the result of this tests will give you a diagnose for his thyroid , fortunately it is not so hard to diagnose

Regarding his kidneys if he has hyperthyroidism, yes it can make it a little hard to determine if his kidneys are ok since as some explained before it makes his whole body work in kind of hyper mode which could mean his kidneys are also working a bit more than they should hence appearing like all is well when is not, and what happens is when you start the treatment for the thyroid his kidney numbers may look worse that before you gave the treatment because since they start working at a normal pace well they may be lacking sort of speak but that doesn't really happen to all cats is just something that may happen and there's no way of knowing beforehand, thing is leaving his thyroid untreated can be much more dangerous than whatever his kidney condition may be

 

Fortunately Babu hasn't had any adverse effects so far, there's no I-131 (radioactive iodine treatment , it sounds worse than it is ) available where I live so he's on methimazole and doing ok so far, regulating them is a bit tricky, it is a hormone after all, so as with insulin you have to raise and lower the dose a bit to find the right one and will require regular blood tests but is not that hard

 

Thank you…A real laboratory would be one of humans?. Here is the idexx machine but I don't know if is good calibrated. The veterinarian treats few patients by personal decision... Unfortunately we still cannot repeat the test (the first was done in a human laboratory and returned 8.4 ug/dl). I will make an update with other new results…

 

Oh it's very complicated... The vet can still make the diagnosis. I have to wait for an appointment to do fructosamine and repeat t4, this time in veterinary technology (idexx). Please check the update of Tuni in a new post. We are in Chile. Thank you.

 

The issue is that the blood analysis machines in vet labs do not always accurately measure thyroid values. If the vet sends out the blood sample to an IDEXX lab (there are more than one IDEXX lab in the USA) that lab will return accurate thyroid values.

 

The machines in the vet's office are a less complicated version of the ones in an actual testing laboratory, that specializes in testing blood. These places can do humans and animals, as long as their technicians know what they are doing. These results will be much more accurate than the ones from the veterinarian's office.
If your cat's thyroid hormone tested high with the outside lab's result, he has hyperthyroid disease. This should be treated before making judgements on any other problems (unless they are immediately life-threatening), as hyperthyroid can affect every other part of the cat. The symptoms of HT often look just like the symptoms of other diseases, including diabetes.
Also, a cat that is so terrified of going to the vet may very well show increased blood sugars just from the stress of being so terrified. Our cat's blood sugar would test 100 units higher at the vet than at home, and he wasn't even visibly very upset by being there. We put him on the best low-carbohydrate, diabetes-type diet possible (and now he's just on Fancy Feast--you don't need an expensive food, just a low-carb one), got his thyroid levels down to normal, and the signs of diabetes disappeared, his blood sugar stayed normal, his thirst and peeing and everything else calmed down, the tests that looked like he might have liver disease starting went back to normal, and his kidneys tested fine, too.

Get the thyroid under control. Make sure you have him on a low-carb, diabetes-like diet. Then reevaluate for diabetes and kidneys and everything else.

If he is that terrified at the vet, maybe ask if there's some medication you could give him that would sedate him a little before he goes? But make sure, if they do give you something for him, that it won't affect other bloodwork.

 

Unfortunately where I live there are not idexx labs and to rely on the vets calibration or to go a human labs. Thanks.

 

Thanks. I understand, then maybe it’s better take a blood sample and go to a human lab. The first sample had coagulation problems and they analyzed it that way, so it is necessary to repeat the thyroid exam. But 2 biochemical tests have been done in less than a month, the basal glucose in the first test came out slightly elevated and the second was normal. I guess could still have diabetes, but it's masked by hyperthyroidism.