Allergies are very commonly diagnosed in cats and dogs. We see many dogs and cats through the clinic who have been diagnosed with food or environmental allergies.
Our main job at Raw Essentials is to rebalance the immune system by switching off the dog or cats tendency to "over react". Dogs and cats should be able to tolerate pollens and grasses and fleas and house dust mites. So why is it that so many of them are diagnosed as being allergic to these common every day environmental triggers?
A healthy and normal immune system reacts to harmful threats by producing antibodies. These antibodies bind to the "threat" and are cleared from the body by a specialised system called the reticuloendothelial system. When this system is over loaded, the clearance no longer occurs. The antibodies are bound up with the threatening substance and continue to circulate in the blood stream. These circulating immune complexes start to cause trouble - they are deposited in the skin, the gut, the kidneys, the joints and trigger local and generalised inflammation - heat, redness, swelling and itchiness, the typical signs of an allergic reaction.
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Rebalancing the immune system by feeding raw, biologically appropriate food takes a lot of pressure off a very over loaded immune system. Allergy panels commonly show dogs and cats as being allergic to corn, soy and wheat. Rather than getting caught up in the specifics and expense of allergy testing, our suggestion is to remove grains and starches from the dog and cats diet. Foods they are not designed to eat. And feed a protein source that the dog or cat has not eaten before for a period of 6 weeks - this allows the gut a chance to readjust. As 70% of the immune system is in the gut - the gut is the best place to start to fix an allergic animal.
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It is incredible how much impact these simple measures have on calming down an over active immune system.
We are not suggesting that all allergic dogs have food allergies. We are suggesting that biologically appropriate raw foods can have an impact on reducing allergic tendencies.
Rebalancing the immune system by providing a raw diet and supporting the immune system in the gut with dog and cat specific probiotics and animal derived essential fatty acids are the simple things that can make an enormous difference to a very frustrating problem.