Fasting For Dogs - Is it Healthy?

How Fasting Can Clean Your Dog’s System From Years Of Poor Diet

If you’re one of the millions of dog owners who occassionally allow your pet to induldge in the delightful scraps from your own less than perfect diet such cheap hamburgers, hot dogs, cold cuts, semi moist sugar-preserved dog foods - or any foods containing nitrates, nitrites, aldehydes, and other assorted harmful additives - the particular pancreatic enzymes that are needed to digest the proteins in your dog’s system become depleted quite rapidly. So could your porky pet benefit from a short fast?

Meats that have been thoroughly cooked rarely contain enough live enzymes to be of any value to the dog’s digestive system.

Without enough pancreatic enzymes to digest the protein, the food begins to putrefy and can lead to pancreatitis and toxemia. We can give more food but it is not being utilized. If the body can’t use the nutrients, this is tantamount to not having them.

The body begins to feed upon itself in order to sustain life, and the animal loses weight and muscle tone in spite of the quantity of food provided. In the case of malignant tumors, the body feeds the tumor while starving itself, so the tumor grows to robust proportions while the body shrivels like a dehydrated prune.

If you suspect ill health in your pet, don’t stuff him with food, hoping that he will regain strength.

You will actually be further depleting his impaired vitality. Withholding food for a day or so will cause a revitalization of the body, because the body will have a chance to fight the impairment without the continuing added burden of processing food. This applies whether the food is wholesome or second-rate, but even more strongly when it is of poor quality.

Then the digestive organs are not working in the processing of food, they have an opportunity to apply themselves to the digestion of debris in the body.

Fasting is nature’s most perfect medicine, since the body works to rid itself of the debris, or harmful toxic matter, first, thereby effecting a most marvelous housecleaning of cells.

Cells drowning in toxic waste have no room to absorb nutrients. They must first rid themselves of this obstructing waste.

The process by which the body feeds upon and digests the debris is called autolysis. Some types of tumors or cysts can enjoy resorption into the body through this gradual, natural purification process.

If you have an older dog, the chances are that through years of dietary indiscretions, his enzymes have become somewhat depleted. Whatever sturdy stock remains can be reinforced by adding pancreatic enzymes to the diet.

This will serve to bolster the forces of protein, fat, and carbohydrate digestion, and you will be augmenting the metabolization of your animal’s food. Pancreatic enzymes can help turn the tide of sluggish digestion, enabling the digestive process to perform with much increased efficiency.

This will provide a most harmonious relationship within the digestive tract. The surplus enzymes can now effect a cleansing process by breaking up the toxic debris stored throughout the body.

Are Carbohydrates Hindering Your Dog’s Weight Loss?

There is a significant difference between humans and dogs in their need for carbohydrates and in their ability to digest them. The digestive tract of a human is longer than that of a dog, and the formation of jaws and teeth is entirely different. A dog’s digestion starts in the stomach. Dogs’ teeth - all 42 of them - are built to tear flesh apart. Dogs gulp their food as fast as they can, which then reaches the stomach with no digestion having taken place.

Human digestion starts in the mouth. A human chews food with 32 teeth, which have flat surfaces for grinding and breaking down food. Enzymes contained in the saliva contribute to this breakdown of the food, which is being digested before it reaches the stomach.

Carbohydrates come in two forms, simple and complex. Simple carbohydrates come from grains such as wheat, corn, rice, oats, soy and millet. They break down into starches and sugar when properly cooked. Complex carbohydrates come in the form of various fibers such as brans, hulls and peanut shells from the outside of plants. A small amount is needed for proper digestion and stool formation. Nutrients are obtained from both sources, but most come from simple carbohydrates.

If carbohydrates are a major part of your dog’s diet, the time and energy needed for digestion increase, the dog performs less well, large amounts of stool are produced, and a protein deficiency disease may develop. Dogs have evolved as meat eaters and although they need some grains, their health and longevity will be better served on a diet containing more animal protein than protein from grains.

Think about the origin of the dog. It is unrecorded in history that wolves lit fires and cooked grains picked in fields! But there were whole carcasses available that contained everything needed for wolves to survive, including predigested vegetable matter in the intestinal tracts of their prey.

The reason the majority of dry dog foods contain such large amounts of cereal grains is that grains are a cheap source of nutrients. According to the NRC guidelines, “Carbohydrates provide an economical source of energy in the diet of dogs.”

Allergic reactions to grains are common in dogs. The best diet for your dog matches that fed in the breed’s country of origin as the breed developed. Each dog is an individual, and if yours refuses to eat his food, check the grains listed on the package. The dog may balk because of an allergy to one of the grains in the food.