* Disclaimer: The products offered on this web site are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Rather, they are intended for educational purposes only. These treats contain simple sugars and starch levels generally found to be safe for horses with insulin resistance. However, every horse is an individual. Check with your own veterinarian. The statements presented on this web site have not been evaluated by the FDA or USDA. The use of herbs for the prevention or cure of disease has not been approved by the FDA or USDA. We therefore make no claims to this effect.
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Cushings Disease Glycemic Index • Insulin Resistance -- The Definition • Insulin Resistance -- The Mechanics • Metabolic Syndrome of the Equine (EMS) • Natural Horse Care/ Low Sugar Lifestyle • Non Structural Carbohydrate (NSC) Analysis • Safer Horse Foods •
Glycemic Index
The Glycemic Index ranks how carbohydrates effect blood glucose levels. Choosing low GI carbs – the ones that product only small fluctuations in your horses' blood glucose and insulin levels – is the key to reducing the risk of laminitis, founder and other serious horse health problems.
Insulin Resistance Defined
Insulin Resistant is not actually a disease. The tendency to gain weight easily and to store fat in times of sparse vegetation was a survival mechanism of many of our horses' and ponies' ancestors. This explains why the breeds that tend to be most at risk of IR, are among the hardiest. For example, Arabians, Morgans, Shetland Ponies and Mustangs.
To see Insulin Resistance as a man made condition, as opposed to an inherent weakness of the horse, is a huge shift away from conventional thinking. But try looking at it this way: People removed horses from their natural, low sugar and low starch environments, domesticated them, and put them in lush green pastures and barns. There, horses tried their best to adapt to the richer grasses and high sugar and high starch feeds (sweet feeds, grains, oats and molasses to name a few). When adaptation included excess fat or worse yet, laminitis and founder, people turned around and labeled the horses as having a “disease.”
Insulin Resistance -- the mechanics
Insulin is a hormone secreted by the pancreas. It helps the body utilize blood glucose (blood sugar) by binding with receptors on cells like a key would fit into a lock. Once the key -- insulin- has unlocked the door, the glucose can pass from the blood into the cell.
The two greatest consumers of glucose in horses are fat cells and muscle cells. When a horse is Insulin Resistant, these tissues are not as sensitive to the effects of insulin. Therefore, Insulin Resistance occurs when the normal amount of insulin secreted is not able to unlock the door to cells. The result is that it takes the production of larger amounts of insulin to move glucose out of the blood and into the cells.
It is interesting to note that as more and more people in the U.S. are becoming obese, physically inactive – or both – so, it seems, are more horses becoming diagnosed as IR. States a recent article from The Horse Journal (published December of 2006): “The 1998 Equine Study performed by the National Animal Health Monitoring System reported that over a one-year study period 13 percent of the equine premises surveyed reported having a horse with laminitis. Even if only half of those were related to insulin resistance, that would amount to approximately 540,000 horses per year with IR severe enough to cause laminitis.”
Metabolic Syndrome of the Equine (EMS)
This is best explained by our own Veterinarian Consultant, Dr. Eleanor Kellon, as she explained it recently on the 4,000-plus- member Yahoo list she moderates for horse owners with horses who have Cushings and/or Insulin Resistance.
“This (Equine Metabolic Syndrome) is a takeoff on the term Metabolic Syndrome in people, which is characterized by insulin resistance, usually obesity and alterations in fat/triglyceride metabolism, with an increased risk of heart disease.
Dr. Philip Johnson first proposed the term “equine metabolic syndrome” to describe horses that were insulin resistant without having Cushing's disease as a cause. Although research dating back at least 30 years had shown ponies are often insulin resistant without Cushings, the idea that full sized horses could be was a new one (and most people forgot, or never knew about, the pony studies).
In some, but not all, human cases of insulin resistance, there is also overproduction of cortisol by the fat cells in the abdomen and a specific pattern of obesity where fat is concentrated in the abdomen (i.e. “beer belly” pattern of fat.) The early theory of equine metabolic syndrome aslo proposed that overproduction of cortisol by equine fat cells might be the cause of insulin resistance in horses, too. This is where the now defunct term “peripheral Cushings” came from.
While overproduction of cortisol by the 11-beta-HSD enzyme (peripheral Cushing's) has not been confirmed to be a cause of IR in horses to date, there is now no doubt that IR can exist without having Cushing's as the cause. The Virginia Polytechnic field of study of a large pony herd identified a genetic link, which is likely to be true for full size horses, too, although in humans there are several different genetic predispositions identified.
Getting back to “metabolic syndrome,” as mentioned. The idea came under a lot of criticism, including that horses didn't have the same alterations in fat metabolism. Recent studies have found that's not the case and even full size horses do have some changes in fat metabolism. It's not the same degree as in people, and it doesn't result in fat clogged arteries (atherosclerosis) like it does in people – even in ponies which have more dramatic changes in their fat metabolism – but it does occur.
So, what this all boils down to is that Insulin Resistance and metabolic syndrome are basically the same thing. It may be caused by Cushing's disease/PPID/pituitary tumor, or may just be a part of the horse's basic metabolic make up.
In people, the most devastating consequence is heart disease. In horses, it's laminitis. Fat clogged arteries don't seem to occur in horses, but he blood vessels in their feet are more exquisitely sensitive to chemicals causing vasoconstriction than vessels elsewhere in their bodies.
So far, the one Virginia Polytechnic study and a few older studies have clearly linked IR, even worsening IR, to laminitis. But the definitive studies to show the mechanism aren't there yet. There are “dots” in the puzzle, such as several studies that show the potent vasoconsrictor endothelin is elevated in laminitis, and others in people showing its up in IR, that suggest the mechanism but still no studies connecting those dots. Sooner or later we'll have them. In the meantime, stay tuned and get on the DDT (Diet, Diagnosis, Trim) band wagon because one thing is for sure in both horses and people: Low NSC diet has the most beneficial effects.
Natural Horse Care/ Low Sugar Lifestyle
A natural lifestyle is not one that we can recreate easily, if at all, in domesticity. However there are some parameters that define a natural lifestyle given to a domesticated horse. Some of these requirements include: A lifestyle in which a horse is turned out (as opposed to stalled); is kept barefoot and trimmed regularaly in a balanced fashion so as to emulate the natural wear and tear of 15-20 miles of travel a day; has the company of at least one other horse; is sustained by a healthy variety of safe foods , herbs and forages similar in nutritional content (sugar, starch etc.)to what the horse would graze in nature.
Non Structural Carbohydrate (NSC) Analysis
Combined sugar and starch levels of a particular hay or feed . (To calculate the NSC, a laboratory subtracts the crude protein, ash, fat and protein free neutral detergent fiber levels from the feed dry matter.)
Safe Horse Foods
Safer foods include forages, whole foods, supplements, herbs and other feeds that have a Non Structural Carbohydrate (NSC) analysis of 10 percent or less. This percentage is what leading veterinarians, Equine Nutritionists and other experts have deemed to be well tolerated by Insulin Resistant horses. There is no way to guess what forages and foods are safe unless the forages and foods have been tested in a professional laboratory. Even if you think you know what the NSC is of a hay – you do not actually know unless you have it tested. So save your horse needless pain and suffering – do not guess.
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Cushings Disease
Cushings Disease is caused by a benign tumor that presses against the pituitary gland -- the master gland of all hormones. This pressure can cause all kinds of different sorts of damage in a horse, ranging from Insulin Resistance to excessive sweating to androhysis. However a common misnomer about this disease is that all horses who are Cushigns are also Insulin Resistant. This is not true! One can and often does exist without the other. Other symptoms of Cushings can, but do not necessarily include laminitis and a weakened immune system. Horses diagnosed with Cushings are often very effectively treated with Pergolide. The most effective way to test for Cushings is with a blood test that measures the horse's ACTH levels.
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