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For owners with dogs who easily overheat


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This has a simple enough article on why some food are heaty and some are cool. Well, it's not based on science - the western kind yet (maybe in another 50 yrs, they might find some chemical/energy.. etc basis), but rather, in the chinese science.. which is so different from the west (like me doing my sums with the abacus vs another similar western instrument.. i have no example except the calculator.. but that's a modern invention).. and for us (believers, it make sense).

 

http://www.shen-nong.com/eng/lifestyles/fo...y_food_tcm.html

 

But really, just like religion.. to each of his own belief, science cannot prove everything.

 

I'm willing to accept that it works in your perception because you believe it works. But, until someone shows how it works, or that it works when subjected to a non-biased evaluation (ie: it works when someone uses it who doesn't believe that it works before starting the test), then I don't accept that it works.

 

And it's not "just like religion". We're talking about physiology and medicine here. In those realms science can prove whether something is a real effect or completely bogus. I know there are lots of people who seem to have a hard time differentiating between religion and science but there is a huge difference my opinion. They deal in completely different realms of human experience. Each perfectly valid in their own respect but not intersecting.

 

Pearse

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Here is the way I see it: it most certainly could have some basis in reality, because so much is unknown about both nutrition and physiology. Changing diets can have a lot of different, indirect effects much as Pearse has pointed out anyway.

 

Fish are rich in Omega 3 fatty acids, and for an animal protein, have a high 3:6 omega fatty acid ratio. Omega 3 fatty acids are the precursor molecules mammals use to produce anti-inflammatory hormones. Omega 6s are the biochemical precursor to inflammatory hormones. We need both, because tissues do need to get inflamed to heal from use and injury, etc, but it is absolutely conceivable to me that consuming a higher ratio of anti inflammatory building blocks could in a sense "cool" the body down, by keeping low-level inflammation (which creates hot tissues) to a minimum. The body would be able to handle more activity-generated muscle warming because less muscle warming would be caused by background inflammation.

 

And that's just one scientific, completely non-religious idea I can come up with that would begin to explain this diffuse concept we're talking about. I think we're being too metaphorical in our description of what we're trying to achieve dietarily for Pearse :rolleyes:

 

My friend is a Chinese herbalist and eastern medicine practitioner - I think I will ask her as I know she considers dietary choices to be *very* pertinent to body function.

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Look, I grew up with this too to a certain extent (it's not exclusively a Chinese thing) and I'm also an anthropologist which means I am all for cultural relativism and do not tend to scoff at folk knowledge offhand. But just because a bunch of people have believed something for a long time does not make it true. I believe there is a lot of value in traditional Eastern medicine. I also believe that a lot of it is probably total bullshit. The "a lot of people believe it so it must be true" argument doesn't hold water with me, nor does the "a lot of people have believed it for a really really long time" argument.

 

For what it's worth, eating dogs in the summer is supposed to cool you off, so I guess dog is a "cool" food by that yardstick. Since eating tiger penises is supposed to give you really great erections, I guess tiger penis is a "hot" food.

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Um, ok, I asked my friend. Background is this girl is extremely smart, but has always been into “new-agey” things. Being a scientist like Melanie and Pearse I essentially rolled my eyes when she enrolled in school for traditional eastern medicine, because I also have a hard time accepting ideas like eating tiger penises. But the first time she gave me an acupuncture treatment it changed my mind pretty dramatically – there is something to this stuff that goes way beyond placebo effect (or, even if it is all placebo effect, I say who cares because it is such an especially strong and very helpful form, that it would be worth studying in its own right!).

 

My friend studied and worked very hard for about the same amount of time it would take to get an M.D. She had lots of tests and there are definite techniques, pathologies, etc she had to know, and I was personally surprised to learn there are very definitely right vs. wrong answers. I know she knows a LOT and has helped many many people that western medicine couldn’t help, and has even diagnosed chronic diseases in people that had previously gone undiagnosed for years by our western medical system. However, I have to say all of it, if you ask for a rational explanation, sounds like total BS. For example, she diagnosed me with something called “liver qi stagnation”.

 

“There’s something wrong with my liver?!” I asked, panicked.

 

“Yes and no,” she replied. “It’s your metaphorical liver.” :rolleyes:

 

But, I admit she helped me immensely with my “stagnant liver” through some diet changes, some accupuncture treatments, and some herbs. This helped a host of seemingly unrelated and annoying health problems I have that are mostly due to stress – like insomnia and jaw joint issues – things that western medicine basically sucks at.

 

Anyway, so this is why I’m interested in the hot/cold foods thing, not because I think it’s magic. Whatever in the herbs, acupuncture, and diet changes that helped me and other people I know must have some very rational explanation we just don’t know yet. So I wrote her asking if she could give me sort of a list like many of you are talking about in this thread. Also, there are some disagreements on the “coolness” of certain foods in this thread that I wanted to ask about.

 

I should have known it would not be easy. Apparently the whole concept of “food temperature” is very important, and it doesn’t just mean foods that help your body regulate temperature down or up. She kept asking me for Odin’s “heat signs”, so I described his “crazy eyes”, drunk walk and dragging hind gait he gets when he’s way too hot; and I also described the time as a puppy that he collapsed from overheating (at the time he was not doing anything at all, and we were hanging out in the shade on a pretty hot day). It turns out she wants me to describe “heat signs” such as a “greasy coat on the tongue, possibly with small mouth blisters”. Um, if my dog had that I’d be going straight to the vet – I think. I don’t actually know what a greasy tongue coat is supposed to look like. Then, she cautioned she needs more information to give me a helpful food list because some foods also promote “dampness” which I guess would be bad. Then she wanted to know if Odin “has an excess of wind”. He!! yes, this dog has an excess of wind, was my first reply, but again I’m pretty sure we’re still not talking about the same thing :D.

 

So, I’ll post again if I can answer her bizarre questions well enough that we can develop a “cool food” list for Odin, just in case it is interesting to anyone – but I don’t know how universally helpful any list would be. It seems that if Odin had an excess of metaphorical “cool” or damp then I guess feeding him cool foods wouldn’t actually do anything to literally cool him down in real life and could even make the problem worse. (I think?) Also, apparently not all fish is cool and different fish are different, so it is more complicated than we were all thinking (and my theory above doesn't work). Again, I’m not saying I believe this to be true – instead I think it’s worth trying and may have some physiological basis in reality even if it does sound crazy, because I’m telling you her explanations of acupuncture sound just as insane.

 

And yes, I agree acclimatization and conditioning are going to provide the biggest difference. Odin’s heat tolerance is much better now at the end of the summer than it was this spring.

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Hmm... yeah interesting. I don't care if it works or not.

 

I'm pretty much willing to try whatever food combo (except raw) that helps my dog stop having heat strokes. No, she's not fat. She's lean, she used to be super lean, but given that she has diarrhea a lot (don't now why, has been to vet to figure out) I try to keep a bit on her but she's still thin and very muscled. She is very active and has no problem hanging outside all day doing not much but her own running around from time to time. The issue is when we play fetch and could be as little as 7 throws at full runs there and back that wipe her out.

 

Switching foods is so easy and safe, why not try and see if it works for my dog - she's obviously different they my 3 other ones. That's all I care about.

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Well I might not have any scientific proof, but when 3 different vets on both coasts tell me the exact same thing, it gets me to thinking. For anecdotal experience, I switched Wick's food when I was first told this and she hasn't had any problems since. I changed nothing else. Next summer, no problems, summer after that, no problems, etc... so that takes out acclimating. And her fitness level and weight have always been where they should be. Note this was all before I moved from the hot & sticky SE to the cooler NW. My other BC Rave will overheat in cool temps (high 60s, low 70s), so she was the one I switched to a fish food. I also started B12 injections at the recommendation of a vet here. I won't know if this has any real effect until the summers after this one. Regardless of what may be working, these are both simple, harmless and pretty cheap measures to take to possibly prevent my dog from brain injury from yet another seizure from overheating. Well worth it IMO.

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for the skeptics:

 

I worked with some of the best physicians in the country over a decade now. Most of them are natural as well as trained skeptics, and some of them downright hate the idea of anything "alternative". I am amused to report though, that many of them also grudgingly admit that a lot of the alternatives, in particular acupuncture and chinese herbs, "work but we don't know why".

 

The funniest of which is a bone deep skeptic who is a boarded endocrinologist. He admits, grudgingly, that he no idea why that acupuncture fixes his own father's arthritic issues when he can't with referalls to top rheumatologist and top of the line medications and therapies. And to him "fix" is not subjective, but a reduction in the visible inflammation of the joints, and a decrease in inflammatory marker values in the blood.

 

Placebo effect does occur in people, but you can't convince a dog something works because you want it too. (Well, you can lie to yourself, but the dog will still be having problem to anyone who cares to look).

 

Old knowledge may be folklore, or it simple may just be old knowledge that doesn't have the potential to make a company enough money to justify formal research. While someone should certainly use their head and research carefully before taking unknown substances in conjunction or in lieu of their medications, changing out simple protein sources certainly isn't at the level that science is required beforehand.

 

So why not? If a cool food helps, then it's easy enough to do.

 

I scoffed at a lot of things in the past that I now do willingly and successfully. So does my vet(s). If we waited on science to find value enough in some problems, then the decades of research to prove it, a lot of dogs and people would have suffered needlessly, if they survived at all.

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