K9joy Education

How You Can Avoid Detoxification Problems when Shifting Your Dog's Diet…

From the desk of Mogens Eliasen - first published: Date

Ever been feeding your dog a biologically inadequate diet (like commercial kibble of any kind)? Ever decided to shift to something better (like a raw natural diet)? You will expect, then, to see general health improvements because of the new and better diet, right?

During times of a nutritious inadequate feeding, the body will accumulate a lot of "bad stuff" in the organs and the depots, lacking access to the "good stuff" it needs. When you now suddenly let it have abundant access to all the "good stuff" it needs, it wants to rid itself of all the "bad stuff". It simply substitutes "bad stuff" with "good stuff", as quickly as it can - which means: in dependency of the supplies!

This will create a sudden increase of the concentration of all the "bad stuff" in the blood and in the organs that are supposed to deal with the discharge of this waste, primarily the kidneys and the liver. This concentration of "bad stuff" could very easily exceed the limits for what the body can handle without stress….

When you feed a diet that is not made of raw, natural components, this is prone to happen when you shift to a natural feeding, at least to some extent. Heat processing of raw meat is known to destroy at least 30 fundamental nutrients the dog needs as badly as we need vitamins. Lacking access to those prime nutrients, the body will instead try to "do the best it can" with whatever else is available. So, when you now shift to a healthy natural diet, you get problems…

Just imagine this: you built a house with low-quality building materials. Suddenly, you get access to the building materials you always wanted. You instantly start the process of replacing the old low-quality materials with the new ones that are much better for the purpose! In the process, you create a lot of debris you need to get rid of - and you may have some temporary problems finding a place to store that waste until you can haul it to the dump!

Another detoxification example of different nature is given by Nicotine. We all know that Nicotine has a whole range of very negative effects on the body. In order to deal with this poison, the body generates some big anti-bodies of protein molecules that create a bond with the Nicotine and thus neutralize it.

When you continuously supply Nicotine to the body, the body will try to "keep up" with the intake by programming itself to a steady production of those anti-bodies. And to make it worse: it takes a lot of time (several months) to establish this process at full efficiency - as it takes several months to dismantle it...

Now, if this anti-body protein were harmless, we would have no trouble. But it isn't. It is actually almost as toxic for the body as the Nicotine was.... When you stop the Nicotine supply, the body now has to deal with this over-production of anti-bodies that cannot be stopped as quickly as you quit smoking.... The result is an unpleasant poisoning of the body with its own antibodies! All smokers, who have tried to quit, know what this feels like...

All kibble products and canned food products have been preserved with poisons that are labeled as "preservation chemicals", and they are at least as harmful to the body as Nicotine, often much worse….

The specific effects of a detoxification process will generally appear as a poisoning. Which it, in reality, also is. The specific clinical symptoms will vary with the poison, with the dog's overall health, with history, and with the amounts. In other words: it is impossible to give a short and precise description. Some common symptoms include lethargy, lack of appetite, skin irritations, abnormal temperature, and many more.

You will generally see the symptoms of poisoning after a few days, maybe a week, after the shift. Rarely more than a week delayed. If so, it will be a mild case.

And it may last a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks, and maybe even a couple of months! It all depends on the specific circumstances. In my general experience, 1-2 weeks is the most common.

If you are not prepared for the detoxification process, you might experience that the dog gets sick from the natural food!!!! But reality is that you are just now paying the price for your toxic feeding in the past....

However, it is simple to prevent it. All it takes is that you introduce the new diet and its good nutrients slowly, over some time. This way, the body can discharge all the accumulated toxins and adjust its own antibody productions at a more tolerable speed that will not stress the internal organs as much.

You can avoid the effects of detoxification by introducing the new foods gradually, over a time of some weeks. As a rule of thumb, use a "transition period" that is two weeks for every year the dog has been fed kibble, yet never more than two months. The specific math you need to use to manage such a gradual transition does not need to be overly precise. Dividing the "transition period" into for instance four phases with different ratios of old/new diet will generally do the job in a way that leaves the dog with no trauma when shifting it to a natural diet.

The disadvantages of doing such a gradual transition should not be ignored, though:

• You extend the feeding of less-than-healthy foods….

• Digestions of a mix of cooked, carbohydrate rich foods with raw meats and bones is not always easy on the dog either, as there are some serious chemical compatibility problems in that…

• It is a bit tedious to administrate…

Many people choose to "go cold turkey" with the shift to natural food - and their dogs thrive excellently on it! In my assessment, it is less than 10% of all dogs shifted to a natural diet that will experience significant detoxification problems or other temporary problems with the shift.

But if you happen to be the owner of one of those dogs, then please do not blame the natural food for what in reality is your own past mistake… Just use common sense and logic (and your understanding of detoxification!) to manage the situation in the best possible way for your dog.

Sincerely,

Mogens Eliasen

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