Please Think on This …

January 26, 2011 - Diet & Nutrition, Equine Healthcare, General Equine Care, Hoofcare - 7 comments

Think on this — 3 decades ago, heck even 2, Cushings and IR in horses were considered to be ‘old horse’ diseases. COPD was not a prevalent disease nor was DSLD (heck, even now, many equine vets don’t know what DSLD is).

Now they seem to be pandemic in even horses as young as 3 years old. Plus, early arthritis and other inflammations are becoming ‘the norm’ with so many horses – sport, performance and pasture puffs.

What’s changed in that time?

The event of processed feeds and the heavy reliance upon them. Fresh foods, (grass, weeds, flowers, herbs, etc.) are now viewed with open eyes and “What! Are you crazy!? My horse can’t eat ‘that stuff’! ”  “That stuff’ll kill him!” yet the horses is dis-eased with metabolic ‘stuff’ going on and eats nothing but the ‘best, specially formulated’ equine processed feed. Plus the horse gets hundreds of dollars worth of  ‘processed’ supplements. “An apple? OMG! No! Don’t feed an apple to him! He’s IR!  He can’t HAVE any fresh fruits! Too much sugar! ”  etc. etc. etc.

Along with the $1.00 a pound specially formulated, processed food, the $100+ supplements a month, the horse is also wearing orthotic shoes because his hooves are weak, brittle, shelly, thrushy, yeasty, cracked, chipped, … unhealthy altogether and the horse can’t be without something to hold his hooves together.  Oh, and don’t forget the $100 of dollars spent on medicines and de-wormers  (which don’t do much good any more in many cases since the worms are becoming resistant to the chemicals). All $$ spent just to keep the horse from getting MORE diseased than he already is.

Sounds pretty radical, right?  And yeah – I used to do the same. Upwards of $250 a month just to maintain one horse at a level of  ‘comfort’ and  ‘usability’.

Then I got thoroughly fed up and started thinking and searching and reading … realizing that horses decade ago just didn’t have to deal with all this. So what was *I* doing wrong with my own horses?
Think  again on this — 3 decades ago when MOST people still ate fresh foods. Diabetes in kids, arthritis in kids, asthma etc. were considered out of the norm. Now it is said that 1 out of every 3 children born after the year 2000 will get Diabetes. So what’s up with that !!! IMO, that’s a pretty, damned, scary statistical projection!

Processed foods. Chemicals. Preservatives. Artificial colorings, flavorings. The food industry has found ways to keep food from decaying on the shelves -forever – with chemicals. (Think on the 20 year old Twinkie that is still wrapped in its wrapper and still as soft and moist as the day it was made! Ewwwwww!)  All this INSTANT stuff … boxes of dried foods ready to eat in just minutes. Stuff that if offered to a dog or cat or horse in its ‘boxed’ state, they wouldn’t even begin to sniff it. Stuff that only the weevils or miller moth’s chew on.

Bleeeeech!

See the parallel here? Equine health declining; human health declining … processed ‘junk’ now the major portion of food for most in this country (USA).

Look up Dr. Pottenger’s Cat Study or Dr. Paul Kouchakofff’s studies on Leukocytosis and Processed foods.  (Yeah, yeah — they’re studies that go back to the early 1900’s but then so do alot of the studies and theories around which we live our lives and upon which we depend for health.)

And NOW — just this past month — it was found that eating just ONE processed sausage increases the chances of getting bowel cancer by 20%! A review of more than 7,000 clinical studies examining the connection between diet and cancer came to a stark conclusion:  No one should eat processed meats.

The World Cancer Research Fund came to the following conclusion:

“There is strong evidence that … processed meats are causes of bowel cancer, and that there is no amount of processed meat that can be confidently shown not to increase risk … Try to avoid processed meats such as bacon, ham, salami, corned beef and some sausages.”

You read that right — no amount of processed meat is safe.

Dr. Paul found the body reacted to processed meat as if  ‘it had been poisoned’.  He also found that ANY processed food caused a rise in the Leukocyte levels in the blood that signals the body that something that doesn’t belong there is there! Leukocytes are the white blood cells that fight off infections and poisons – foreign invaders – in the body. That was back in the 1930’s! But think of what’s happened to our food supply SINCE then!  And – to our animal food.

Is it any wonder that more and more horses are suffering from Insulin Resistance, Cushings Disease, Arthritis, COPD, DSLD, and other diseases that were pretty much unheard of 3 decades ago?

What are you feeding YOUR horse? What are you feeding you?

All I ask is that you think on it. Logistically, sanely, and with contemplation.