Canine Diabetes - Tips For Regulating Your Dog's Blood Sugar Levels

Your pet has just been diagnosed with canine diabetes. Regulating your pet's blood sugar levels is an important part of managing diabetes in dogs. Here's what you need to know.

What Are Blood Sugar Levels, And Why Are They Important?

Dog Food

The carbohydrates in the food your pet eats are broken down into glucose during the digestive process. Glucose is what your pet's body uses for energy, and it's sent to all parts of her body via the bloodstream. It's normal for blood glucose levels to rise after your pet eats.

This is when insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas, is released, to keep blood sugar levels from getting too high. Normally your pet's body will regulate the balance between blood glucose levels and insulin levels on its own.

Blood sugar levels are measured in millegrams per deciliter (mg/dL). The normal range for a canine is between 75 and 120 mg/dL. It's normal for blood glucose levels to rise after a meal, but they should come back down quickly. If the blood glucose levels remain above 180, the body will attempt to get rid of the extra glucose by excreting it in the urine. This is called a "sugar spill."

Elevated blood sugar levels over a period of time will damage your pet's organ systems, including her eyes and her kidneys. Diabetic ketoacidosis can result, which is a life-threatening crisis.

It's important that your pet's blood sugar levels don't get too low, either. Blood glucose levels around 80 are considered low. If they fall to 60 or below, your pet can start having seizures and die very quickly.

How Do You Monitor Blood Sugar Levels In Dogs With Diabetes?

You can use a urine strip to check the amount of sugar present in your pet's urine. Or you can use a blood glucose meter to measure blood glucose levels. Your vet will let you know which is best for your pet.

Feeding And Insulin

You'll need to get into a routine of feeding your pet twice a day, usually every twelve hours. Your vet will probably recommend a low-fat, high-fiber food.

Insulin shots are usually given at mealtimes. It's best to wait until after your pet has eaten to give her the shot. If you give it before the meal, and then she doesn't feel like eating, her blood sugar levels will drop to dangerously low levels. In this case, you'll need to get your pet to the vet immediately.

Insulin is stored in the refrigerator. Take the time to warm the vial in your hand before injecting the insulin. It will be painful for your pet if you give it to her cold.

Regulating Diabetes In Dogs Takes Time

It can take several months to get the balance between food and insulin right for your pet. The ideal is to keep her blood sugar at normal levels all the time. In real life, her blood sugar may get a little higher or a little lower during the day. The key is to prevent extreme highs and lows.

Can I Ever Stop Giving My Diabetic Canine Insulin Shots?

No, you'll need to give her insulin for the rest of her life. There is no cure for this disease right now.

How To Prevent Canine Diabetes

Prevention is the best cure. Overweight pets are at high risk for developing this disease, so put your obese pet on a diet. Regular exercise will help burn those extra calories, and is a great way to naturally control blood sugar levels.

Many pet owners also use natural remedies for dogs to keep blood sugar levels under control. Research has shown that certain herbs and dietary supplements are effective for regulating blood glucose levels in pets.

Protect your pet from becoming a canine diabetic by learning more about natural remedies for dogs today.

Canine Diabetes - Tips For Regulating Your Dog's Blood Sugar Levels

Dog Food

How Body pH Can Affect Your Energy Levels

WHAT MOST PEOPLE DON'T REALIZE; WE ARE BIO ELECTRICAL ENGINES

In order to accomplish all the many millions of complex functions that occur over the course of the day, your body has to be able to communicate with itself... all the way down to the cellular level. And do you know how it does this? Through pulses of electricity. That's right, electricity.

Dog Food For Sensitive Stomachs

Your body operates on an electro magnetic current. Believe it or not, all of the organs in your body emit these fields of electrical current. In fact, nerve signals are nothing more than electrical charges.

What creates this electrical power in your body is a very fine balance that exists in your bio chemistry. And of all the systems in your body that depend on this delicate, bio chemical balance, one of the most important is your blood stream. This is where pH comes into play. But what is pH?

WHAT PH IS AND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO ALL YOUR BODY FUNCTIONS

PH is a scale that measures how acidic or alkaline a substance is. The scale ranges from 1 to 14 with 1 being very acid, 7 neutral and 14 very alkaline.

So what does pH have to do with you and your blood? Well, the pH of your blood is extremely important. The ideal pH level for your blood is right around 7.35 and your body goes to enormous lengths to maintain this level.

Why? Because if your blood pH were to vary 1 or 2 points in either direction, it would change the electrical chemistry in your body, there would be no electrical power and in short order you would drop dead. As you can see, maintaining the right pH level in your blood is pretty important!!

With this in mind a good way to avoid upsetting this delicate bio chemical balance would be to take a look at those things that can compromise the maintenance of the ideal pH level in your body. And what is the main culprit in this case? The answer is the creation of acid in your body.

Before we look at what causes acid, here's a graphic example to give you an idea of what can happen in the blood when your pH drops to less than ideal. Red blood cells are how oxygen is transported to all the cells in your body.

As red blood cells move into the tiny, little, capillaries, the space they have to move through gets pretty small. In fact, the diameter of the capillaries gets so small that the red blood cells sometimes have to pass through these capillaries one red blood cell at a time!

Because of this, and because it's important for the red blood cells to be able to flow easily and quickly through your body, they have a mechanism that allows them to remain separate from each other. This mechanism comes in the form of the outside of healthy red blood cells having a negative charge. This causes them to stay apart from each other, sort of like when you try to push the negative ends of two magnets together. They resist each other and stay apart.

Unfortunately, acid interferes with this very important mechanism in a pretty frightening way. Acid actually strips away the negative charge from red blood cells. The result is that your red blood cells then tend to clump together and not flow as easily. This makes it much more difficult for them to flow easily through the bloodstream.

But it also makes it harder for them to move freely through those small capillaries. This means less oxygen gets to your cells. Acid also weakens the red blood cells and they begin to die. And guess what they release into your system when they die? More acid.

I could describe a whole list of processes that occur when your system becomes and remains acid but I think you get the idea. The point is that aside from the acid that is secreted into your stomach to aid digestion, acid in your body is bad. Really bad.

In regard to producing energy in the body, here's an easy question for you. What do you think happens to a person's energy level if over time their system becomes more and more acid, their biochemical balance is disrupted and their red blood cells can't deliver oxygen and nutrients as efficiently to all their cells? The answer is simple. Their energy level drops. Dramatically.

Are you beginning to get the picture here as to the importance of pH in your body? Good. Now let's take a quick look at what causes acidity in your body and then look at steps you can take to get your body pH back to an ideal level.

WHAT CAUSES ACID IN THE BODY

The primary cause of an acidic condition in your body is from what you put in your mouth. In other words, what you eat and what you drink. And it isn't how "acid" something may seem when you eat or drink it. It has to do with what is left over when you digest it.

Specifically, does eating or drinking something leave behind an acid or alkaline "ash". For example, I don't know about you but I love seafood. Scallops are one of my favorites. However, when your body digests scallops, it leaves an extremely acid ash. In fact, scallops are one of the most acid foods you can eat.

Unfortunately, a lot of the things most people put in their mouths create an acid ash. These include alcohol, coffee and a lot of flesh protein in your diet. Interestingly enough, stress also tends to create an acid condition in the body.

STEPS YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY TAKE TO IMPROVE YOUR PH

Fortunately, it is pretty easy to immediately change your pH for the better and make it more alkaline. The first step is to understand which of the foods you are eating and the drinks you are drinking are acid and which are alkaline. Then it's simply a matter of eliminating some of the more acid foods you are eating and adding in more alkaline foods.

However, before you start, it's important to get a baseline of what the pH is in your body so that you can see how you are improving or if you need to continue to eliminate more acid foods and add in more alkaline ones.

You can do this by testing the pH of your saliva on a regular basis. This is really simple to do. More details on how to do this are provided on some web pages I have created for you to help you out. A link to these pages is provided below.

In addition to decreasing the amount of acid foods you eat and increasing the amount of alkaline foods you eat, one of the best ways to immediately begin changing your pH is to drink "green drinks". You can make these by simply adding a powder that is made up of a whole host of vegetables that are highly alkaline to a glass of water. Information on suggested green drink powders to use is included on pages that I have a link to below.

RESOURCES WHERE YOU CAN LEARN MORE

Clicking on the following link will take you to some pages I created that have more information on alkaline and acid foods, how to test your own pH and what to look for in green drinks.

http://www.ajpip.com/resources/site_map.htm

Start taking the steps described above and you may very well find your energy levels increasing over time. Mine certainly have.

- Andy Long

How Body pH Can Affect Your Energy Levels

Dog Food For Sensitive Stomachs